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Administrator
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: NYC
Posts: 5,899
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Joyce Alexander Wein - R.I.P.
I am so sorry to report this. She was loving, lovely and so bright and creative. My deepest sympathies to George, Joyce's sisters and all of Festival Productions and their extended family
Joyce Alexander Wein
October 21, 1928 – August 15, 2005
Joyce Wein, wife and business partner of jazz impresario George
Wein, died Monday, August 15, at New York Presbyterian Hospital
following a battle with cancer. She was 76.
Joyce Alexander Wein was born in October 21, 1928, in Boston,
Massachusetts, the sixth of seven children of Columbia and Hayes
Alexander. Her mother was the youngest of thirteen children, two
of whom were born into slavery. Joyce attended Girls Latin School
and at the age of 15, entered Simmons College, where she graduated
with a major in chemistry in 1948 at the age of 19. After
graduation, she started her career as a biochemist at Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston and later in New York at Columbia
Medical School.
In 1959, Joyce Alexander married George Wein, founder of the
Newport Jazz Festival, and gave up her career in biochemistry. Mr.
Wein, an internationally known impresario, leaned heavily on her
advice and partnership in the Newport Opera Festival and Newport
Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the
Hampton Jazz Festival, and the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice,
France. In 1963, Mrs. Wein joined her husband and Pete and Toshi
Seeger in founding the Newport Folk Festival, a major engine of the
1960s folk revival; her tireless work behind the scenes was
critical to that event's success.
A founder of the New York Coalition of 100 Black Women, the
forerunner of coalitions around the nation, Mrs. Wein has been
deeply involved with philanthropy and the arts. She was
responsible for establishing the Joyce and George Wein
Professorship Fund in African-American Studies at Boston
University, and recently set up the Alexander Family Endowed
Scholarship Fund at Simmons College. She has served on the Board
of the Studio Museum in Harlem for ten years, and has partnered
with her husband in amassing an important collection of paintings
and drawings by African-American artists. (The George and Joyce
Wein Collection of African-American Art will be shown at an
exhibition at the Boston University Art Gallery from November 18,
2005 through January 22, 2006.) For the past ten years, she and her
husband have partnered with Kenneth and Kathryn Chenault, the CEO
of American Express and his wife, to host an annual dinner for
Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone, raising over
$500,000.
In addition to her husband, Mrs. Wein leaves two sisters, Eugenia
Manning of San Francisco, California and Theodora McLaurin of
Hingham, Massachusetts and many nieces, nephews, great nieces and
nephews.
Funeral Services will be held on Friday, August 19, at 11:00 a.m.
at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home, 81st & Madison.
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