World-famous performers, civil rights leaders and people who know her good works are gathering for the funeral of international opera star Jessye Norman in her Georgia hometown.
Norman will be laid to rest Saturday afternoon at the William B. Bell Auditorium in Augusta, Georgia, with a private burial to follow.
Actor Laurence Fishburne is expected to speak and musicians Wycliffe Gordon and J'Nai Bridges from the Metropolitan Opera will perform. Norman's longtime friend and civil rights activist Vernon Jordan will talk about the singer's life along with elders at her family's church in Augusta.
Norman's funeral will be streamed live.
Norman died Sept. 30 at age 74. She was a trailblazing performer, and one of the rare black singers to attain worldwide stardom in the opera world.
Hundreds of people paid their respects to Norman, whose soaring soprano filled the sanctuary of Mt. Calvary Baptist Church during visitation Thursday and Friday.
The mourners included Deanne Brown, daughter of singer James Brown — The Godfather of Soul and one of Augusta's most famous musicians. There were sorority sisters, a church music director who met Norman after a concert, a woman who went to the then-segregated Lucy C. Laney High School with Norman in Augusta and remembered how her choir solos even then commanded the tiny stage. And there was a woman who went to music school at the University of Michigan with Norman and said she had never heard anything like her before or since.
"Her voice would captivate you. You could feel exactly the emotion in her soul. And it wasn't just opera. She could sing anything better than just about anyone else. She found her place in opera, but she was just as good singing with a pop choir in England or a gospel group here," said Stephen Mitchell, a music director at a church in Athens, Georgia, who met Norman once — after a concert in Birmingham, Alabama, and was instantly mesmerized.
Augusta named a street for her Friday just outside the Jessye Norman School of the Arts, which she founded in 2003 to provide free fine arts education to disadvantaged children.
Norman won four Grammy Awards and had 15 nominations. She won her first in 1985 for best classical vocal soloist performance for "Ravel: Songs Of Maurice Ravel." She earned a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.
She received the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honor as well. Her performance of "Amazing Grace" at the 1995 Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Sidney Poitier brought the actor to tears.
Norman was awarded the National Medal of Arts from former President Barack Obama and is both a member of the British Royal Academy of Music and Georgia Music Hall of Fame. She sang the works of Wagner, but also Duke Ellington.
"Pigeonholing is only interesting to pigeons," Norman said in a 2002 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.
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TOKYO (AP) — The American envoy to the United Nations called Friday for countries armed with atomic weapons to pursue nuclear disarmament as she visited the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki, Japan.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who became the first U.S. cabinet member to visit Nagasaki, stressed the importance of dialogue and diplomacy amid a growing nuclear threat in the region.
“We must continue to work together to create an environment for nuclear disarmament. We must continue to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in every corner of the world,” she said after a tour of the atomic bomb museum.
“For those of us who already have those weapons, we must pursue arms control. We can and must work to ensure that Nagasaki is the last place to ever experience the horror of nuclear weapons,” she added, standing in front of colorful hanging origami cranes, a symbol of peace.
The United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. A second attack three days later on Nagasaki killed 70,000 more people. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending World War II and its nearly half-century of aggression in Asia.
Nagasaki Gov. Kengo Oishi said in a statement that he believed Thomas-Greenfield's visit and her first-person experience at the museum “will be a strong message in promoting momentum of nuclear disarmament for the international society at a time the world faces a severe environment surrounding atomic weapons.”
Oishi said he conveyed to the ambassador the increasingly important role of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in emphasizing the need of nuclear disarmament.
Thomas-Greenfield's visit to Japan comes on the heels of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's official visit to the United States last week and is aimed at deepening Washington's trilateral ties with Tokyo and Seoul. During her visit to South Korea earlier this week, she held talks with South Korean officials, met with defectors from North Korea and visited the demilitarized zone.
The ambassador said the United States is looking into setting up a new mechanism for monitoring North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Russia and China have thwarted U.S.-led efforts to step up U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its ballistic missile testing since 2022, underscoring a deepening divide between permanent Security Council members over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
She said it would be “optimal” to launch the new system next month, though it is uncertain if that is possible.
The U.N. Security Council established a committee to monitor sanctions, and the mandate for its panel of experts to investigate violations had been renewed for 14 years until last month, when Russia vetoed another renewal.
In its most recent report, the panel of experts said it is investigating 58 suspected North Korean cyberattacks between 2017 and 2023 valued at approximately $3 billion, with the money reportedly being used to help fund its weapons development.
The United States, Japan and South Korea have been deepening security ties amid growing tension in the region from North Korea and China.
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, shake hands during a meeting Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, shake hands during a meeting Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, right, speaks to Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, second right, as they wait for a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, right, walk to meet Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, talk prior to a meeting Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, prepare to talk during a meeting Friday, April 19, 2024, at prime minister's office in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool)
