Akua Dixon

Veteran Cellist-composer-Conductor-Vocalist Akua Dixon has done it all! She has performed with the Giants of Jazz. Concerts with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Betty Carter, Carmen McRae, Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, Wynton Marsalis, B.B. King, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, the list goes on and on. Her string arrangements include those for the Grammy Award winning CD, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" and for Aretha Franklin's grammy nominated "A Rose Is Still A Rose". Akua has won several awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, Meet the Composer, and was the 1998 recipient of the African-American Classical Music Award. She has conducted for movies, jingles, recordings and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Akua lectures and gives workshops on string improvisation, for all levels, from elemtary schools to universities. She has been on the roster of Carnegie Hall's Neighborhood Concert Series and works with urban youth in her "Hip-Hop Blues" project. She has been a leader in jazz string education and jazz string history. She is truly "one of the treasures of contemporary jazz".