AUDIO: Listen to the story

(Full text below)

VIDEO: by David Alvarado

Norah Jones
Homecoming Concert, Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet High School
June 7, 2008:

Edie Brickell and Kenny Withrow
Homecoming Concert, Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet High School
June 7, 2008:

Roy Hargrove
Homecoming Concert, Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet High School
June 7, 2008:

Alumni Ensemble Band
Homecoming Concert, Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet High School
June 7, 2008:

Frank LoCrasto
Homecoming Concert, Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet High School
June 7, 2008:

FULL STORY:

Edie Brickell was just one famous graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts who celebrated the school’s new $55 million facility with a concert Saturday.

Edie Brickell: “I loved going to this school. I came after the ninth grade. I wish that I’d taken music but I wasn’t brave enough. I took art. But luckily, this school gave me friendships that led me to a happy career and I’m very grateful … “

Some 550 people raised more than $400,000 for the school’s development fund – and to hear Brickell, fellow New Bohemians band member Kenny Withrow, Norah Jones, Roy Hargrove and pianist Frank LoCrasto. Erykah Badu was scheduled to play, but publicists said she dropped out due to a minor injury sustained during a tour performance in Vancouver.

The Arts Magnet received accolades from the performing alumni – for both their own educational experiences there in the ‘80s and ‘90s and for the new expansion. Brickell even composed a new song, singing that if she had to be in high school again, “put me back back in Booker T. Washington.”

Shaun Martin, the Grammy Award-winning producer who opened the evening with a jazz ensemble, admired the instruments in one of the school’s new music studios. He joked that they would have taken up all of his time when he was an adolescent.

Shaun Martin: “It would have been trouble in paradise. Algebra would have been non-existent because we would have been in here.”

But he added, new equipment can’t make up for quality teachers who care, the kind he had at the Arts Magnet.

“Really, this school could be across the street at 7-11. If you don’t have the type of teachers that have the type of passion to pour into kids, if you don’t have that type of surrounding and those types of adults around teachers – that’s what it really boils down to.”