America’s home-brewed music has always been a heady mix of diverse traditions—sacred & secular, juke joint & big city, African, European, and the opera house.
R&B songwriter, drummer, and vocalist Porter Carroll, Jr. has been tight-rope walking that cross-cultural tradition since before he was born…
Through his parents’ migration from southern sharecroppers, to New York suburbanites and their passion for every flavor of American music. And through his own evolution…
From a high school garage band in a breathtakingly diverse community, to leading the R&B/Pop hit machine Atlantic Starr from the 70’s 80’s and 90’s, to composing, touring, and recording with artists like the Temptations, Luther Vandross, Taj Mahal, Denise Williams, and currently with the number one selling duo in music history, Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Daryl Hall & John Oates.
Now Porter is taking that trans-millennial musical odyssey uptown, in the ultimate cross-cultural crossover. It’s a soul-stirring night of irresistible music, blending the richest traditions of blues and soul with the unconventional and emotional power-punch of a major philharmonic orchestra in Porter Carroll Jr.’s Symphony Rhythm and Blues…and music is just the tip of the iceberg.
Porter Carroll Jr. has an all-American story to tell: the upbringing of a self-taught musician; a tale that wraps the ambitions of every child who’s ever dreamed of making the big-time into the story behind the music of all our lives. It’s a story of family, community, diversity, race, and change, of paying your dues and busting your chops, of paths taken or not, and life on the road. Not just one man’s coming of age, but the soul of a nation, and the traditions behind our most popular “crossover” musical genre—Rhythm & Blues.
Symphony Rhythm and Blues weaves this quintessentially American story into an hour-long special that takes viewers backstage, inside the creation of a breakout musical evening, and puts them in the front row for a concert like you’ve never heard before. Along with Grammy-winning composer & arranger Michael Colina, Porter Carroll Jr. has cooked-up a “new” American Songbook—the greatest hits of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, performed live, in a high-test musical hybrid driven by the power of a full orchestra and founded in the unmistakable soul of R&B.
Porter Carroll, Jr. and Peter Schnall graduated from high school together. They reunited as a result of a meeting about their unique scholastic experience and Porter showed him a clip of a Symphony Rhythm & Blues concert. Peter enthusiastically offered to get involved. The mission now is to produce a documentary about the first in the country Princeton Plan they studied under and this classical styled music project that was inspired by it.
Peter Schnall is a seven-time EMMY Award and recent Peabody Award winner who has been making distinctive films and documentaries for more than twenty years.
After nearly ten years as an independent, Peter began a remarkable 6-year stint as Producer and Senior Producer of the long-running National Geographic Television weekly series Explorer.During his time on Explorer, where his beat was real people, adventure, history and exploration films, Peter garnered an unprecedented six National Emmys, including four for best historical programming and two for cinematography.
In 1996 Peter left National Geographic Television to form Partisan Pictures in New York City.
When the White House was looking for a filmmaker they could trust to tell the story of Air Force One, they turned to Peter, giving him unprecedented access not just to the plane and its crew, but to three presidents as well; when Oprah Winfrey wanted a trusted filmmaker to document her humanitarian sojourn to Southern Africa to draw attention to the plight of children with
AIDS, she turned to Peter; and when the U.S. Secret Service wanted its story told to the American public, they, too, turned to Peter Schnall and Partisan Pictures.
The great Sharon Bryant shared a ground-breaking career with Porter in Atlantic Starr. She has created seamless vocal arrangements, realizing the full potential of this ultimate cross cultural cross over.
