“Patricia Prattis Jennings is well-acquainted with performing on stage in front of audiences all over the world,” writes Linda Wilson Fuoco in Thursday’s (11/14) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “For 42 years, she was a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where she played piano, harpsichord organ and celeste … before retiring in 2006 as principal keyboardist…. She’ll now face a different kind of audience as she does readings from her self-published book of essays, ‘In One Era and Out the Other.’ The first reading will be at 7 p.m. today in the Reception Hall at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie.… [Jennings’] writing career began in 1994 when she wrote a four-part series for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette while on a European tour with the symphony. She continued to write for the P-G and other publications such as Symphony magazine…. Her father, the late P.L. Prattis, was a longtime editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, once the largest circulation African-American newspaper in the country. In 1956, Ms. Jennings became the first African-American woman to perform with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. ‘I describe my book as a kind of buffet,’ she said, offering a broad array of topics, including food, cars, typewriters, music, falling down, and Barack Obama.”
Posted November 14, 2013
