Tagged: Arkansas Music

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, in partnership with the Thea Foundation, is launched the Stringed Instrument Drive.

It is aimed at collecting gently used violins and monetary donations to bring classical music back into the schools in Little Rock and North Little Rock

Paul Leopoulos, Executive Director of the Thea Foundation, says music can help children achieve academically and boost their confidence.

The late Johnny Cash was well known for his prison concerts, but this weekend the BBC will air a special looking at one lesser-known prison show that helped spur reform in Arkansas.  You can listen to the show here.

The international broadcaster sent a reporter from London to Arkansas to research the performance at Cummins Prison in 1969.

On what would have been Johnny Cash's 80th birthday, dozens of family members joined hundreds of fans and residents in the east Arkansas town of Dyess Sunday to formally mark the beginning of work to restore his boyhood home.

"This project has been in the making for several years and I never thought that it would actually come to fruition," said daughter Rosanne Cash, who led the ceremony at the Dyess Community Center. "We never foresaw that it would take on this kind of life."

Actor and activist George Takei, best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek, is in Little Rock this week to perform with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.

While the orchestra plays, Takei will narrate A Survivor from Warsaw, a piece written by Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg in 1947. As narrator, Takei takes on the persona of Jewish concentration camp survivor.

A sold out show at Arkansas State University raised more than $310,000 for the restoration of the boyhood home of music legend Johnny Cash in the east Arkansas town of Dyess.

Four generations of the Cash family, including daughter Rosanne Cash, son-in-law Rodney Crowell and son John Carter Cash were on hand to pay homage to Cash, as were many of his longtime friends like Kris Kristofferson.