TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON, Artistic Director

With technical wizardry and profound creativity, Terri Lyne Carrington, has become one of the giants of today’s jazz music. A four-time GRAMMY Award-winning drummer, composer and producer and received a 2019 Doris Duke Artist Award for her demonstrated commitment to her craft; as well as recognizing her future potential contributions to the field of jazz.

 Carrington began her professional career at only 10 years old and received a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music at the age of 11. She is the first female artist to ever win the GRAMMY Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Over her forty year of her career, she has played with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Pharoah Sanders and Esperanza Spalding, among countless other jazz luminaries

Carrington has also collaborated with acclaimed visual artists Mickalene Thomas and Carrie Mae Weems, and has curated musical presentations at Harvard University, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the John F. Kennedy Center. 

RODNEY WHITAKER,  Resident Artist 

Rodney Whitaker is a Carr Center Resident Artist and Artistic Director of the Gathering Orchestra. He is an internationally renowned bassist and an award winning Mack Avenue recording artist. Building on his Detroit roots and enormous talent, Whitaker has gone on to earn an international reputation as one of the world’s finest  performers and teachers of the jazz double bass in the United States. He completed a seven-year tenure as bassist with Wynton Marsalis’ Septet and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. In addition, Mr. Whitaker has toured the world over the last twenty-five years, collaborating and performing with legendary jazz artists such as Pat Methany, Terence Blachard, Marcus Belgrave, Regina Carter, Cassandra Wilson, Donald Byrd,  Diana Krall and over 100 other jazz luminaries. He currently holds the titles of Professor of Jazz Bass and Director of Jazz Studies at Michigan State University where he has built one of the leading jazz degree programs and performing faculty in the United States.

George Shirley, Resident Artist

If there is one person who can be credited with opening the doors for modern black tenors it would have to be  Professor George Irving Shirley and his prodigious career of remarkable firsts. 

Recently retired as a Distinguished University Emeritus Professor of Voice at the University of Michigan, Mr. Shirley, is known as one of opera’s most versatile tenors and he has enjoyed a trail blazing international career. 

Raised in Detroit and a graduate of Wayne State. In 1955 George became Detroit’s first black high school music teacher. The following year, drafted into the Army, he became the first black man to sing with the U.S. Army chorus. In 1961George Shirley became the first black male to receive a contract from the Met and the second black male to perform there.

George performed 28 major roles in 26 operas during his 11 seasons with the Met, appearing more often than any other tenor. He also performed for the Royal Opera (Covent Garden), the Chicago Lyric, Netherlands, Scottish, San Francisco, New York City and Michigan opera companies

He also received a Grammy Award in 1968 for his role (Ferrando) in the prize-winning recording of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte and his solo performance with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was nationally broadcast on CBS in 1990. In 2014, he  was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama,  the nation’s highest artistic award for demonstrating a lifetime of creative excellence.

Juanita Anderson, Resident Artist

Juanita Anderson, Senior Lecturer and Area Head of Media Arts and Studies programs at Wayne State University, is a veteran producer, executive producer and documentary filmmaker.

A native of Detroit, she has previously held the positions of Producer/Director and Production Manager at WSIU-TV, Executive Producer of Cultural Affairs and Special Projects for WTVS – Detroit Public Television, and Series Producer for WGBH-Boston.

A long-standing advocate for minority participation in public broadcasting and for independent media, Anderson has served on the Board of Directors of the Independent Television Service (1998-2005), and was a co-founder of the National Black Programming Consortium.

She is also an accomplished still photographer whose work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the permanent collections of Southern Methodist University and the Mott-Warsh Collection.