On February 15, we’re looking forward to screening two films by Michelle Carpenter, Chair of the Visual Arts department in CU Denver’s College of Arts & Media. The first is her 2022 documentary Awadagin Pratt: Black in America, followed by a premiere of her newest film, Dr. Eddie Henderson: Uncommon Genius. A companion exhibition, Time and Spaces: The Life of Eddie Henderson, opens at our sister gallery, the CU Denver Experience Gallery, on February 1, 2024.
Awadagin Pratt: Black in America
On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police officers arrested George Floyd. His arrest and murder were recorded on camera by a witness and documents Mr. Floyd begging for his life and unconscious under the knee of three police officers. George Floyd’s televised murder triggers a response in Awadagin Pratt, and Pratt begins to relive countless police stops, racial profiling, and harassment. The film Awadagin Pratt: Black in America reveals his climb to fame and is a candid conversation about what it is like to be a person of color in the United States. Awadagin Pratt: Black in America confronts issues of privilege and racism in America and tells a personal account of an all-too-common experience for many people of color in America and worldwide
https://www.blackinamerica.life/
Dr. Eddie Henderson: Uncommon Genius
Dr. Eddie Henderson is a renowned American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. Eddie Henderson received his first trumpet lesson from Louis Armstrong at nine. When Eddie turned 14, his family relocated to San Francisco, where he studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1954 to 1956. In 1957, Eddie met Miles Davis for the first time. Miles, a longtime family friend, admired the gorgeous tone of Henderson’s trumpet playing. Davis encouraged Eddie to pursue a music career. While studying at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Henderson attended a professional ice skating show and became consumed with figure skating. Eddie competed in both the Pacific Coast and Midwestern Ice Skating Championships in the late fifties and early sixties, and he was undaunted by racism and the race barrier that existed in the skating world at the time. During the Vietnam War, Henderson enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. After serving his country, he relocated to Colorado. He was permitted entrance into the Denver Figure Skating Club, and in 1960, Eddie represented the club in the Midwestern Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis. In the 1960s began to pursue dual careers in medicine and music, earning a Bachelor of Science in zoology in 1964 at the University of California at Berkeley and an M.D. at Howard University Medical School four years later in 1968.
During the 1960s, Henderson began performing with jazz legends such as Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Throughout the 1970s, Henderson recorded several more albums as a bandleader and collaborated with other notable musicians such as McCoy Tyner and Benny Golson. He also recorded his first album, “Realization,” in 1973, which featured Hancock, Sanders, and others.