Vivian Reed was thinking it had been a long time, too long, since she had appeared on a Pittsburgh stage. Then her phone rang — twice. The first call was an invitation to do an MCG Jazz concert in March for pal Marty Ashby, and now she is coming back for her second hometown concert, “An Evening With Vivian Reed” Friday at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture.
That first concert was Ms. Reed singing Lena Horne, something she has been doing since 1972, when she was cast as Lena in the Broadway musical revue “That’s Entertainment.”
On Friday, she will be at the August Wilson Center, Downtown, for a concert that will be a little bit Lena and a lot of Vivian Reed.
The singer drew raves last year for a stint at New York’s Metropolitan, including this Broadway World headline: “Dazzling ‘Diva’ Vivian Reed Is Awe-Inspiring on Standards & More.” The New York Times headline declared, “Vivian Reed, Serenading With Theatrical Power and Spirituality.”
Now, the Homewood native is here at the request of that second caller, Pastor Barbara Gunn of Mount Carmel Baptist Church in North Versailles. Ms. Reed readily agreed to perform the benefit concert for Jasmine’s Camp, which honors the legacy of Jasmine Claggett.
Claggett died at age 25 in 2015, after a two-year battle with cancer. She continued to work with children during her illness and was president of the Young Adult Ministry at Mount Carmel and an athletic trainer for Pittsburgh Obama Academy and other schools. In her honor, her family and church created a program to provide opportunities for kids age 8-14 to participate in sports activities during the summer.
Ms. Reed, who lives in New York but maintains a home in Homewood, sang at the church on a recent trip home
“I have to give kudos to her parents. You are not supposed to lose a child,” Ms. Reed said of Dwight and Karen Claggett.
She is as pleased to do her part as she is to be singing in a building that bears the name of award-winning hometown playwright August Wilson.
Ms. Reed, a Tony Award nominee for “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” was trained as a soprano — “but I have a huge range” — starting at age 8 at the now defunct Pittsburgh Musical Institute.
Her father, Clyde Reed, “was a fantastic singer,” she said. “He was known around the churches but never took any formal lessons. According to what they said, I don’t remember this at all, they said I was around 3 and making melodious sounds, and my mother said to my dad, ‘I think our daughter is going to be a singer.’ ”
They took her at age 6 to Pittsburgh Musical Institute, where she sang for vocal teacher Romaine Russell, who told her parents to bring her back in a couple of years. At 13, she gave her first concert, at her father’s side.
At that point, after working with Russell, she could sing in three languages.
After graduating Schenley High School, she headed to New York City’s prestigious Juilliard School and later became a polished performer under the guidance of Honi Coles and Bobby Schiffman of the Apollo Theater.
She recorded the Goffin-King song “Yours Until Tomorrow” and became a concert performer all over the world, along with several onscreen roles, including “La Rumba,” in which she portrayed Josephine Baker.
For her concert Friday, she will share the stage with her band and soprano Andrea Jones Sojola, who was in the ensemble of “The Sound of Music Live!” on NBC and on Broadway in “The Gershwins’ Porgy & Bess.”
The women met as performers in a traveling company of “Three Mo’ Divas.”
The music, all her own arrangements, will be “eclectic — R&B, soul, blues, jazz, and some theater pieces and classical — because I can sing in all those genres.”
Now 70, Ms. Reed is choosy about the invitations she accepts to perform. The day after her concert here, she leaves for a gala in St. Louis to honor 15 women.
She also is as stylish as when Mr. Blackwell put her on his list of Best Dressed Women in the 1970s, and she was selected by People Magazine as one of the “25 Most Intriguing People of the Year” in 1976, with the caption, "Black is beautiful on Broadway, and so is Vivian Reed."
The singer took time out from her career to care for her mother, Lucile, who “died in my arms in 2012,” said Ms. Reed, who credits her mother with inspiring her sense of style and teaching her to be a masterful seamstress.
In addition to her singing career and designing her own concert wardrobe, Ms. Reed has her own line of VJR Scarves and “glam” ponchos — “to bring out the DIVA in you” — which she makes herself and sells on Etsy and out of her New York apartment.
“I definitely got my creativity from my mom,” the singer said. “She was an incredible seamstress and taught me how to sew at an early age. I still think about her every day, every stitch.”
She tells a long story about discovering the joys of jeans and sneakers (“always black, never chunky — they shouldn’t look like sneakers”), which came as a shock to her friends.
“Now I am in blue jeans and sneakers and T-shirts, but at first, everyone thought I had lost my mind,” she recalled with a laugh.
These days, when she is not onstage or sewing up a storm, Ms. Reed is a vocal instructor for Marymount Manhattan College and also runs the occasional performance lab.
Looking ahead, she brings her Lena Horne show back to New York hot spot Feinstein’s/54 Below for two shows in November.
She describes her shows as informal between songs, when she shares personal stories and chats up a storm. But when she is singing, be prepared for a woman who has spent a lifetime devoted to her craft.
“Every song is its own moment and has its own production value,” she said. “I don’t do throwaway.”
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg.
First Published: June 27, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
