A prize-winning violinist and entrepreneur, Kelly Hall-Tompkins is the founder of Music Kitchen — a pioneer social justice organization, uniting professional artists in over one hundred concerts presented in homeless shelters around the U.S. and Paris, France. In two thousand-nineteenth, with the support of New York’s Carnegie Hall, Music Kitchen commissioned “Forgotten Voices” to celebrate the organization reaching 30.000 homeless shelter clients. Its debut album, “Forgotten Voices: A Song Cycle for Voices and Strings,” is a composite song cycle featuring sixteen tracks based on and inspired by comments homeless shelter clients during Music Kitchen’s first one hundred concerts.
The fifteen composers on the album comprise Courtney Bryan, Jon Grier, Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Gabriel Kahane, James Lee III, Beata Moon, Paul Moravec, Angelica Negron, Kevin Puts, Steve Sandberg, Kamala Sankaram, Jeff Scott, Carlos Simon, Errollyn Wallen, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Performers on the album comprise singers Allison Charney, Adrienne Danrich, Jesse Blumberg, and Label Risinger; violinist Ling Ling Huang, violist Andrew Gonzalez, cellists Alexis Pia Gerlach and Peter Seidenberg, and double-bassist John-Paul Norpoth. For Hall-Tompkins, this album was her fifth project with recording engineer Bill Siegmund at his Digital Island Studios.
"Our audience was in still, rapt attention — they were with us one hundred%, waiting for the legend would lead next," Hall-Tompkins said of the one hundred twenty-fourth Music Kitchen concert with pianist Marija Stroke and composer-narrator Bruce Adolphe. "They immediately connected with the violin as musical illustrations of the text." "Music Kitchen reaches so many audiences beca of the immediacy and authenticity of concert artists who bring their artistry to the shelter," Hall-Tompkins added. The album is presently available across all digital and physical platforms. To purchase and hear to the album, click here. Hardcopies are available here, and at the Carnegie Corridor Gift Shop.
Music Kitchen’s upcoming projects comprise being featured on the German Public Radio and a screening of its brief film, “Face to Face: Forgotten Voices Heard,” on March twenty-five, two thousand twenty-three, all proceeds will go toward Rockland County’s service organizations for those experiencing homelessness. “Face to Face” has won at several film festivals including at the Ruddy Film Awards and the Multi Dimension Independent, Cannes World, Stockholm Short, LA Documentary, Berlin Indie, and Berlin Shorts Film Festivals. Hall-Tompkins has appeared at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Lincoln Center, and as a co-soloist in Carnegie Corridor with Glenn Dicterow and conductor Leonard Slatkin. She's performed with the Dallas, Jacksonville, and Oakland Symphonies; given recitals in Paris, New York, Toronto, Washington, Chicago; plus appeared at festivals in Tanglewood, Ravinia, Santa Fe, France, Germany, and Italy.
She studied at the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, she later received an honorary doctorate. Her accolades comprise a two thousand seventeen Sphinx Medal of Excellence, Naumburg International Violin Contest Honorarium Prize, and being a feature in the Smithsonian Mum for African-American History. Additionally, Hall-Tompkins was the soloist of the GRAMMY and Tony-nominated Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
