(soft music) - This week on "Curate."

- [Adrienne] It's a show that I built to honor Tina Turner.

And so in a way it feels like my love letter to my hometown because I'm bringing my performance home.

- [David] I like to start with one nice shell, and work from there.

- [Wynton] If you feel like you're not motivated, find somebody you know who you wanna play for.

- [Jeannette] As one filmmaker said it's like bootcamp for creatives.

- Welcome to another episode of "Curate."

I'm Jason Kypros.

- And I'm Heather Mazzoni.

Not many of us had already decided what we wanted to do with our lives at the tender age of six, but the artist you're about to meet did just that.

- Born in Portsmouth and raised in Chesapeake, Adrienne Warren has been taking Broadway, television, and the movies by storm for more than a decade.

- And now the two-time Tony Award-winning actress and singer is doing what she does best, but this time in front of her beloved hometown.

♪ Big wheel, keep on turning ♪ - [Reporter] When we last caught up with Adrienne Warren, the world was in the middle of a pandemic, and this talented actress had just been nominated for a Tony Award for her role as Tina Turner on Broadway.

The talented Portsmouth native not only brought that statue home, but received a second one the very same night for her community service work.

(soft music) - I co-founded Broadway Advocacy Coalition in 2016.

It's a nonprofit, and we work to show people who don't necessarily think they have a voice, how to use the arts to tell their stories.

- [Reporter] Adrienne gives back whenever she has the opportunity, like when we caught up with her as she spoke candidly to students as a proud alum of Norfolk's Governor's School for the Arts.

- [Adrienne] If you are not studying your weakness, do it.

If you're an amazing dancer, study singing.

If you're an amazing actress, actor, and you can't sing, but you want to study and focus on that.

You wanna dance, but you're like, I'm not quite there yet.

Get in dance class because it was doing that, that gave me the strength and gave me the courage, and the confidence to move forward as an actress, to move forward as a singer and as a dancer.

- [Reporter] Adrienne didn't hesitate to share the highs and lows like the numerous workshops and TV pilots she was involved in that didn't blossom into a job.

- In those moments, I really started to get depressed and sad because I was putting my worth into my work.

There were times where I was like, I can't pay my rent.

I'm just gonna eat these hot dogs and I'm gonna do the best that I can.

- I never thought she would be a struggling actor in New York.

I never thought she would be a starving artist.

- And the first time she called and asked her dad how to fill out the paperwork for what, unemployment?

- Yes.

- Oh my God, he had a fit, he was like, what?

- What?

- No, you tried, you're coming home.

- I had to find what made me, Adrienne, happy outside of, like, this career because this career makes you think that that is your worth.

Your worth is what you are in this career and that is not true.

Your worth is in who you are as an individual on this planet, and I want you all to know that and, like, own that.

(audience applauding) I had the pleasure of being invited to learn from Tina Turner when I met her for the first time.

And so I was kind of like, it's cool, it's cool.

Just do your job.

Get in front of her, do the show, and you'll be fine.

I am really grateful that I've had the opportunity to tell stories of women that have been here who have made such a cultural difference in our world, and I am honored that I've had that opportunity.

♪ I left a good job in the city working for the man ♪ - [Reporter] She's also had the opportunity to come home and perform twice in the last six months to sold out shows.

♪ Big wheel, keep on turning ♪ - Recently I've been doing a lot of concert work, and I got to headline Carnegie Hall with a show, and it's a show that I built to honor Tina Turner.

After she passed, I knew I needed to do something.

And so in a way it feels like my love letter to my hometown because I'm bringing in a sense my Tony performance home.

- [Reporter] What's on the horizon for this luminous star?

- This spring on Broadway, I will be starring opposite Nick Jonas in a show called "The Last Five Years" that is going to be at the Hudson Theater on Broadway, yeah.

- [Reporter] As far as venturing into other genres, this talented performer says she's up for it.

- Music, I wanna try as much as I can while I'm here, you know.

Right now I'm really doing a lot of jazz.

It was very different for me 'cause we just did jazz music and holiday music, and I had so much fun kind of branching out and doing just a different style, just completely different thing.

And it was so nice to have a lot of my fans who did come, just go along on the journey with me, and we just had the best time.

I wanna try it all, like, that's what music is for.

- [Reporter] And for Adrienne, that also includes spending time with family and friends and hosting things that bring people together.

- I'm a girl from 757 just like everybody else.

I'm so grateful to be from here because this place shaped me and every time I come home I'm like, oh yeah, that's right.

This is where I'm from.

And everywhere go I take 757 with me.

♪ Do I love you, my oh my ♪ I'm just a grateful, blessed girl to be from this great community.

♪ River deep, mountain high, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ If I lost you would I cry ♪ ♪ Oh, how I love you, baby, baby, baby, baby ♪ (audience cheering and applauding) - [Narrator] WHRO's journalism department is quickly becoming Hampton Roads most trusted source for local news.

Check it out for yourself at whro.org.

- The Eastern Shore never disappoints when it comes to finding artists with great vibes, and David Crane totally lives up to that.

His coastal surroundings and love for nature inspire his unique and worldly ceramic creations.

(inspiring music) (inspiring music continues) - [David] I don't get tired of coming out here.

I can be working around the house perhaps in something I'm not enjoying doing, or could be working out in the studio getting a little stale, and I'll look outside and the wind's right, and I go, I think I'm gonna go out to the beach for an hour.

And so I can walk out to the end of my dock, take my cell phone with me, and a bottle of water, and be at the beach in 10 minutes, take a nice walk, do a little beachcombing, a little shelling, back in the skiff, and back at whatever I was doing in an hour's time.

So it's very convenient.

(seashells clattering) Good shelling right here.

(inspiring music) I like to start with one nice shell, and work from there.

(seashells clattering) I use one larger shell and two or three smaller shells.

So I pick out the biggest one, and then kinda build around that.

It's not rocket science, that's for sure.

(seashells clattering) That's a nice one.

That looks pretty good.

And there's a candle.

The beginnings of a candle.

Half the people that buy the candles don't light them ever.

I really like living next to the ocean.

I spent a lot of time on the ocean in my years as a boat captain.

When you're walking out on that beach and everything is drowned out by the sound of the waves crashing right next to you, it's good thinking time, you know?

Then I might pick something up off the beach that has a nice shape to it that I like and I think, eh, that might look good in clay.

And I've done that many times, so.

That alone is an inspiration.

I just like living in a place that's clean and quiet, and this is it.

(serene music) Okay, another day.

Who put that there?

(chuckling) The last course that I took in school to graduate was a ceramics course that a friend of mine had taken, and recommended, and so I took it.

And it was really the only course I took in my four years of school that I got a legitimate A in.

This was during the Vietnam War, and a lot of professors were handing out A's in protest.

So I did learn a little bit that was working on a wheel.

All the stuff I do is hand-built, and so I don't work on a wheel at all.

I love it, I enjoyed it, and I did get an A in it.

Still have a few of the pieces that I made in that class, but I have a lot more flexibility for what I wanna do.

I got started making the globes, and that was my incentive for about 10 years of work.

And that all had to be hand-built.

I was captaining boats at the time, and that gave me large blocks of time in the off-season to play with clay, and so that was a boom.

I worked several months in the winter down in the Caribbean, and the summer months up in the Chesapeake, Upper Chesapeake, and New England, Maine.

And so I had large blocks of time to play with, and I think that was instrumental in, you know, figuring it out.

And it's just after about 25 years that I really feel like I'm getting close to mastering my end of it anyway.

I found some large oysters on the beach and thought they were big enough to be a little bowl of some sort for holding peanuts, or whatever.

And so I took an impression of the inside of them.

And I eventually came down to this with smaller oysters that I can attach to the platter form.

And then I'll blaze it and fire it, and do a glaze fire on it to about 2,200 degrees.

- David is probably one of the most creative and inventive artists.

And one of the things that I really like to show you about David is his intellectual side, as well as the artistic.

(gentle music) This is an amazing piece.

This globe represents the renascent world.

If we don't take care of our world, this is what it's gonna look like.

And there's one blue spot on this globe that says, hope.

This is all separate pieces put together on this globe, quite the process.

- [David] I make globes the way they've made globes since they started making them.

The first globes were made out of, I guess, paper that they would bend over a sphere, and they still make globes that way today.

Each of these gores has 45 degrees longitude in it, which adds up to 360.

And they're all numbered, and they, of course, all fit together.

And I've had them in order here so that I can work them next to each other, make sure that everything's gonna fit.

Once the tiles are fired, finished fired, and put over top of the foam base that I make for it.

(inspiring music) Your choices in ceramics are almost unlimited because the clay, the material you're using is so flexible.

Start with the interior and glaze the background.

And then I move from there to the interior of each oyster.

That's a different glaze.

And then I do the rim in a white glaze.

You never know, that's the beauty of, that's one of the things I like about clay is that, you know, you put it in here and you turn the heat on, and sometimes I'll pull something out and it's beautiful.

Next time it'll be cracked.

What a great lesson in dealing with disappointment.

I learned that early on in clay, you know.

If you can't deal with disappointment, you don't have any business being in the clay business.

Other artwork, you can paint it, you can look at it, you can maybe, you know, repaint part of it if you want to, but this is done.

Once it's fired, it's finished.

(inspiring music) I brought my mom and my aunts down here one year and took 'em out to the beach.

And my aunt from Indiana, who doesn't see many beaches was just asking, you know, "Now, Bea, what are we looking for out here?"

She wanted a definite, you know, answer what there was.

And my mom just looked at her and said, "June, anything of interest."

And so that's pretty much my guiding thing on the beach is anything of interest.

And there's incredible stuff out there.

- Every two years, Wynton Marsalis, brings his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra here to Hampton Roads in collaboration with the Virginia Arts Festival for an amazing mentoring weekend.

Jazz students from historically Black colleges and universities come to Norfolk to be coached and mentored by this talented team of musicians.

The weekend ends with a band competition where the winners get to open for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on Saturday night.

During year one of the program, Norfolk State University students netted first place honors.

This secured their spot as the opening band, but would these gifted musicians be able to do it again?

- [Announcer] They first band you're gonna hear is Norfolk State, VA. (audience cheering) (lively jazz music) (lively jazz music continues) - Two years ago was super impactful for our band program as jazz musicians.

Getting able to get into the culture of it and see the greats like Wynton, and the rest of his band, it really impacts us.

For us coming back, it's kind of like coming back home.

Yes, we're from Norfolk at Norfolk State University, but it's cool to see our growth, and hearing the same messages, the same stuff that Wynton preaches again, but understanding it at a whole new level is really just great.

- We'd like to start with acknowledging our band directors, our ensemble directors, and we're gonna have them all come up and stand in front of the stage.

Norfolk State University, Stephanie K. Sanders.

(audience applauding and cheering) - [Wynton] I love it, my young people, my directors, you know, a lot I knew when they were 18 and 19.

- I only have three out of the entire jazz ensemble that are back this time.

So this is a new green group and they're excited.

- [Adriel] There is a little bit of pressure, but we've been practicing.

We put our work in.

I'm just gonna see what's happening.

- So I'm very, very excited to experience the new bands that have come and joined the Virginia Arts Festival.

The most rewarding is seeing the fruits of our labor, honestly, the long hours, the many days going over this music, and conveying a message that people can gravitate towards and perceive honestly.

- [Stephanie] I just told them, you know, all these bands that are here, you just need to hear some good music from all of these programs.

Every band that's here has a stellar program.

I think it's a wonderful opportunity for the students to meet other musicians that wanna explore jazz, but to also have Wynton Marsalis, you know, they can touch him, they can talk to him.

- If you're gonna ask questions, please come to the microphones, you can line up behind them.

And please welcome, Wynton Marsalis.

(audience cheering and applauding) - Thank you very much.

It's a pleasure for me to be here to talk to everybody.

- Good afternoon, Mr. Marsalis.

- [Wynton] Yes sir.

- My name is (indistinct) I'm a fourth year music education major at thee Norfolk State University.

- Thee, oh, okay.

- Can't forget that.

- (chuckling) I like it, ain't nothing wrong with that.

- I'm Laila Bazemore from Norfolk State University.

I play trombone and piano.

Nice to meet you.

- My pleasure.

- How do you go about balancing, like, form, and I guess the normal build of going about jazz, the approach with the emotion, the feeling, the soul of it?

- The mistake we make sometimes is that we think our balance is thee balance.

There's billions of perceptions, billions of soul.

I think you have to ascertain what the balance is for you and you have to analyze your own playing.

- [Stephanie] Also, members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center did clinics with the participating bands.

They listened to the music, gave their ideas and input.

And we just happened to have Carlos, the bassist, and he just did a wonderful job of talking with the students, relating to them.

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) (audience applauding) - Our music was integrated before other stuff in American life.

The white musicians were participants in it changing the society is what Benny Goodman wanted to see, is what Gerry Mulligan, all these great white jazz musicians, they wanted to see a deeper level of engagement.

Now we as a nation, we fall short of it, but, yeah, I can't wait.

I love the kids and the directors.

I look forward to it.

Just hugging them, you know.

- My name's Hezekiah Hope, senior music education major at Norfolk State.

My question is, in your life and in your career as a musician, how have you dealt with burnout?

Or how have you dealt with losing motivation, but still knowing I got a gig this weekend so I can't not want to play.

- If you feel like you're not motivated, find somebody you know who you wanna play for, or find a person you can talk to that is smart, that will tell you sometimes stuff you don't wanna hear.

It doesn't matter what color you are, you gotta practice, man.

(trumpet solo music) (trumpet solo music continues) My main thing is take yourself seriously.

Like, take your thoughts, your ideas, your dreams, take your stuff seriously, you know, 'cause a lot of it is uphill.

Another thing is always write a mission statement.

And that mission statement should have three sentences.

What you do or you wanna do, how you gonna go about doing it, and why you're doing it.

It's very simple.

What, how, or through what means, and why.

- [Student] Good afternoon, Mr. Marsalis.

- [Wynton] Yes.

- My name is (indistinct) and I am from Norfolk State University and a sax player.

The question I had for you was how would you advise someone who wants to be a dedicated musician, but has aspirations outside of music?

- Do what you wanna do.

Do both of 'em if you can.

There ain't no law say you can't do two things.

(jazz music) Yeah, I just wanna say that sometimes people deserve awards, they don't get them.

Sometimes they don't deserve 'em and they get them, okay?

And I don't want you to take it any kind of way, except if you don't like that you got an award, practice harder.

- In 2023, the Norfolk State University Jazz Ensemble was selected to perform an opening set for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra's concert.

Let's behold the green and gold and welcome Norfolk State University.

- [Stephanie] Thank you.

(audience applauding and cheering) (lively jazz music) (lively jazz music continues) (lively jazz music continues) - So now I'm gonna announce the two bands selected to perform this evening.

And, of course, it was difficult to select two bands, but here they are.

Huston-Tillotson University.

(audience applauding and cheering) Florida A&M University.

(audience applauding and cheering) Congratulations to everybody.

- All right, we'll see you in two more years.

We'll be back again.

(lively jazz music) - Welcome to "Curate Presents."

I am Kayda Plus, and I'm here with Jeannette Rainey.

How are you?

- I'm great, how are you?

- I'm doing well.

We're here to talk about The 48 Hour Film Project.

- Yes.

- So what's your role in that?

- I manage the filmmakers that are participating in The 48 Hour Film Project, which is a global challenge where any filmmaker of any level is encouraged to make a short film in two days.

- Two days.

- Two days.

- That's not a lot of time.

- No, it's not.

- So how does it work?

- They create their film starting on Friday.

They're assigned a genre, a prop, a line of dialogue, and a character.

- Okay.

- That has to appear somewhere on film.

- And so the goal is for them to think of everything on the spot, like, nothing from what they created or thought about, or written before.

- Correct.

They can do preparation.

They can meet with their production team and say, hypothetically, if we get horror, what are our locations?

What costumes do we have at our disposal?

But it cannot write the script.

And frankly, if they do, you can tell.

- [Kayda] Mm, okay.

- It it's not organic.

- [Kayda] Got you.

- And so they're really just cheating themselves.

- Do you think those are some of the reasons why it's so popular?

- As one filmmaker said, it's like bootcamp for creatives.

- [Kayda] Mm.

- No matter what level filmmaker, they begin on Friday.

They level up by Sunday because they've challenged themselves.

- I wanna talk about the awards.

- Well, after someone creates their film, and they have turned it in that Sunday night, it then screens at the Naro here in Norfolk.

After the screenings at the Naro, the films are submitted to three panelists.

They're industry professionals, and they are judged on the different merits.

Best film, best sound, best anything you would see at the Oscars.

All of these local films are analyzed per that criteria.

And then we have a best of, where out of say 30 or 40 films, the judges narrow it down to 10 films, and it is immediately followed by an award ceremony where the results of their judging are announced.

- So when's The 48 Hour Film Project happening this year?

- This year filming weekend is August 1st through the 3rd.

There are networking events leading up to filming weekend.

So you can meet local filmmakers, and see who you might vibe with.

- Jeannette Rainey, thank you so much for stopping by and talking with us.

- You are so welcome.

Thanks so much for featuring us.

- Can you believe it?

Another season of "Curate" in the books.

- This one felt special though.

- You're absolutely right.

And, Kayda, you did such a great job interviewing all those filmmakers.

You know, we covered more events than ever before, and our producers are still telling the very best stories and shining light on the phenomenal artists in Hampton Roads and beyond.

- I love that, but you know what I love even more.

- What's that?

- That next season is the 10th season of "Curate" and because of that we're going bigger than ever.

- Oh, so does that mean that I can tell them about?

- Jason.

- Well, what about?

- Jason.

- Well, can I at least mention the fact?

- [Kayda and Heather] Jason.

- Okay.

You'll just have to stick around and see what comes next.

- All right, we'll be back in the fall with more new stories and lots of surprises too.

- Well, until then, thank you all for being a part of "Curate."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music fades)