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Jacqueline Hairston attended high school at Julliard School of Music in a program for gifted children and has seen her spirituals performed by the Metropolitan Orchestra of Lisbon, Portugal, and the London Symphony Orchestra.
When the Oakland, Calif., pianist and composer/arranger visits Charlotte for a concert at Johnson C. Smith University on March 31, it will be a homecoming.
The Charlotte native was an associate professor of music at Smith from 1967 to 1973. She will return this month as the featured artist for the university's Lyceum Series, a program for small universities across the nation.
The Johnson C. Smith University Concert Choir and the choir's director, soprano Shawn-Allyce White, also will perform. The program is free.
"There's a certain vitality that I think college campuses have," Hairston said last week. "It will be wonderful just to be in that environment again."
While Hairston studied the classics, she has a special affinity for the spirituals. She has published 30.
She has written solo arrangements for several musical figures, including sopranos Kathleen Battle and Leontyne Price, the first African-American to become a leading "prima donna assoluta" at the Metropolitan Opera.
Hairston, who attended Northwest Jr. High School and West Charlotte High School, was recognized with a Jefferson Award for Public Service in San Francisco in 2007 for "preserving negro spirituals."
She earned a bachelor's degree in music from Howard University and a master's degree from Columbia University.
