The keyboard connection
For more than six decades, Lillette Jenkins-Wisner's passion to connect with audiences through music took her around the world. At 79 she shares her gift with her community.
Lillette Jenkins-Wisner
Native of Harlem, N.Y.
Currently resides in Sarasota.
Graduated from Wadleigh High School, New York City; New York College of Music at New York University; attended Westminster Choir College, Princeton, N.J.
Movie credits: The Cotton Club and Coming to America.
Theater credits: And Further Mo' (jazz pianist); Not Enough Rope (lead role); Sparrow in the Night (lead role); One Mo' Time (music director and pianist); Eubie (music director and jazz pianist).
TV credits: ABC's All My Children (played club owner and pianist) and Lifetime's Molly Dodd (cocktail pianist).
Concert appearances: European Jazz Festival; Floating Jazz Festival; Lorraine Hansberry Concert Series; Around the World Concert Cruise; Carnegie Hall for the United Negro College Fund; Sarasota Jazz Festival; Sarasota's 100th Anniversary show at the Van Wezel.
Albums: Meditation, Lillette Live at Chez Josephine's, Lillette Plays Music of Lil Armstrong and Lillette in Peace and Love.
On musical therapy: "It's really working with the patients to get them activated and get out of their chairs. . . . Getting them activated works miracles for them. I would get them to sing familiar songs from the '20s and '30s, songs that I know they would remember. Get them to dance around and give them musical toys, things that they could keep rhythm with. Anything that would get their minds off of themselves. I worked in mental institutions, I played in the prisons. I did the first show at Rikers Island when they were trying to see how the inmates would react to entertainment in the early 1970s."
On the essence of music: "It's the only thing we have that comes from within. We are all born with music within. It's a spiritual thing. We don't all recognize and use it, but that's why people respond to music when they don't respond to almost anything else. . . . It is the only thing in the world that can reach soul to soul. I experienced this just about all my life from traveling in foreign countries. I don't know their language, they don't know mine, but I get to playing and some of them will sit there and cry when I play the hymns, or romantics or jazz."
On her role in life: "I am serving my purpose. It's the one thing that makes me happy, and it's the one thing that I can do to make other people happy. It's the only thing I have ever wanted to do and that is to play music and it's the only thing I do. It has kept me in good health. It's kept me physically and mentally in the very best of conditions. I can't complain at all. Why in the world would I want to leave that and go to something else that I don't know a thing about? Not me.
" . . . But to me the greatest joy in life is to find out who you are and serve your purpose while you are here on Earth and that is the one thing I have tried to do all my life."
On today's music: "I don't particularly care too much for the changes in the music today. Being from the romantic era, I sort of lean towards the melodies. I love to hear melodies. And for the reason, I still remain into traditional jazz. Most of all the songs I remember are from the '20s, '30s and '40s. Those are eras in which I played in vaudeville and big orchestras, and all we played then was what they call now popular classics. . . . I still love that style of music. And I find that people still gravitate to it, especially now that we are dealing with an older crowd. They are thrilled when they find out somebody is still playing traditional jazz because that's what they want to hear . . . they can relate to that. They can't relate to the rock 'n' roll and hip-hop of today because they can't hear a melody. They hear no lyrics and all they can hear is a rhythm, a drum rhythm and it's a little bit distressing to some of them. Since I don't really care that much for it for myself. . . . You do what makes you happy. Music is something that should make you happy, not make you miserable."
