Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts > Our Mission > News > The Fifth Annual Billie Holiday Jazz at Lafayette Square

The Fifth Annual Billie Holiday Jazz at Lafayette Square

A woman in a headwrap sings into a microphone in front of a band with upright bass, drums, and saxaphone, in a church with a gold organ.

The Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts, and founding director Lawrence Jackson, hosted the fifth annual Billie Holiday Jazz at Lafayette Square this September 9, 2023. The event is a musical celebration of the rich and important legacy of Baltimore’s own jazz legend Billie Holiday Held at Lafayette Square Park, corner of Arlington Avenue and Lafayette Street.

Performances were provided by The Nasar Abadey Jazz Quartet–Sean Jones (trumpet), Herman Burney (bass), Richard Johnson (keys) and Abadey (drums)–with special guest vocalist, recording artist Charenée Wade, professor of vocals and Jazz Studies at Peabody. Product vendors were on hand, as well as community organizations with displays and information sharing throughout the day. Additional performers this year included DJ Charles Dockins, and the Peabody Jazz Graduate Fellowship. The festival was hosted by renowned poet, writer, and professor Kondwani Fidel and as always, was free to the public.

A recycling can full of dirt and leaves with a shovel and brush next to it.
Professor Jackson has just finished working on the street at northwest the corner of Lafayette and Arlington, the morning of September 9, 2023.
six people smiling together in and alongside church pews
Students from Professor Jackson’s class, African American Literature since 1900, seated and standing beside Peabody Jazz Studies Professors Charenee Wade, Richard D. Johnson, and Tim Green at the St. James Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square.
Jazz band in the sanctuary of a church
The jazz musicians performing in the sanctuary of the St. James Episcopal Church.
A woman in a headwrap sings into a microphone in front of a band with upright bass, drums, and saxaphone, in a church with a gold organ.
Jazz musicians James King on bass, Charenée Wade vocalist, Nasar Abadey on drums, and Tim Green on alto saxophone, performing in the sanctuary of the St. James Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square during the afternoon of September 9, 2023.
Three people seated at a table under a tent with flyers about jazz.
Inheritance Baltimore curatorial team seated in front of The Birth of Jazz Exhibit at Jazz in the Square 2023. Gabrielle Dean, Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson, Jennie Chaplin and Xavier Walker.

Lafayette Square is an anchor of Baltimore’s African American religious life, hosting St. James Episcopal Church, one of the city’s three black congregations dating its origins before the 1830s, St. John’s AME Church, Metropolitan Methodist Church, and Star of Bethlehem Spiritual Temple.  Two of the oldest African American Christian congregations in the United States, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal and Sharp Street United Memorial are only four blocks away.  Billie Holiday herself lived on both Fremont Street and Argyle Avenue, just off of Lafayette, and the fountainhead of the City’s jazz heritage was at the Royal Theater (1922-1971), located at Pennsylvania and Lafayette Avenue.