Anne Kennedy
*Anne Kennedy was born on this date in 1920. She was a Black classical pianist and piano professor.
Anne Lucille Gamble was born in Charleston, West Virginia, to Dr. Henry Floyd Gamble and the former Nina Hortense Clinton. She was the younger of two children born into that union. Gamble had two older step-siblings as well. She was eleven years old when her father was killed in a car accident in 1932. Her paternal grandmother had been born while enslaved on the Howard's Neck Plantation in Goochland County, Virginia. Her paternal grandfather, Henry Harmon Gamble, was a foreman on the same plantation and of Scots-Irish and Native American descent. Anne's mother was a high school music teacher and Frederick J. Loudin's Jubilee Singers member.
Kennedy received her early education in Charleston public schools, which were segregated then. She later studied in the Junior Department at West Virginia State College under David Carroll and Theodore Phillips. Kennedy and contralto Marian Anderson were friends and colleagues. The two met when Anderson stayed at Gamble's home in Charleston because she was Black and could not stay in hotels. Attending Fisk University in 1937, she graduated cum laude in 1941 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She then received a Bachelor of Music degree on a scholarship at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Her education included the Juilliard School of Music, George Peabody College, and artist training with pianist Ray Lev. She auditioned for Duke Ellington, was a performing artist and teacher, and launched a concert career after serving on the piano faculties of Tuskegee Institute and Talladega College.
She accepted an invitation extended by Professor John Wesley Work III in 1950 to teach piano at Fisk University for a tenure of thirty-two years. For seventeen years at Fisk, she served as accompanist and piano soloist with the Fisk Jubilee Singers under Matthew Kennedy. In 1956, she married Kennedy in the Fisk Memorial Chapel, a gift from then-Fisk President Charles S. Johnson. Their daughter, Nina Kennedy, is a pianist, filmmaker, and orchestral conductor. Kennedy and her husband traveled and performed as duo pianists.
She received critical acclaim for her performances of Norman Dello Joio's 'A Jubilant Song' and Undine Smith Moore's 'Lord We Give Thanks to Thee' at New York's Carnegie Hall and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Her final faculty recital at Fisk in 1970 included the Liszt, Bach-Tausig, Chopin, Ravel, and John Wesley Work III's Appalachia Suite. She also received critical acclaim for performing Beethoven's Choral Fantasy as a piano soloist with the Nashville Symphony and the Fisk University Choir. In 1954, artist Aaron Douglas selected Anne Gamble for a series of portraits of distinguished Fisk faculty commissioned by Fisk University.
After her retirement, Kennedy was known for performing her arrangement of Albert Malotte's "The Lord's Prayer." She participated in community activities, including The Women's Advisory Committee of the Tennessee Performing Arts Foundation, a music consultant for the Fine Arts Committee of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, a member of "The Outing" Committee, Nashville Symphony Benefit, Vice President of the John W. Work, III Memorial Foundation; the Nashville Chapter of Links, Inc.; and a Life Member of the NAACP. A music scholarship at Fisk University was named in honor of Kennedy and her husband, Anne Gamble Kennedy, who died on June 11, 2001. In celebration of her 100th birthday, INFEMNITY Productions launched a virtual exhibit honoring the life of Anne Gamble Kennedy on September 25, 2020.
To Become a musician or Singer
To Become a Conductor or Composer
