ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512080036
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
``Who is the silver fox at the center of a crowd of admiring fans?''
That's what it says at the top of the press release. The answer follows in bold print: Lillette .
Who is Lillette Jenkins-Wisner?
She's a classical, jazz and gospel pianist, organist, vocalist, actress, teacher composer and arranger. She has appeared on television as a club owner/performer in ``All My Children'' and in films like ``The Cotton Club'' and the Japanese version of ``Coming to America.''
Is there anything Lillette Jenkins-Wisner doesn't do?
``Very little,'' says Elbert Wisner, her husband and vice president and treasurer of Lil-El Productions Inc. ``Yeah, she's all over the place.''
Saturday night she'll be in Roanoke for the Friends of the Roanoke Symphony's Winter Musicale. The concert, at 8 p.m. in Virginia Western Community College's Whitman Auditorium, benefits the Marionette Sprauve Music Scholarship Fund.
Jenkins-Wisner gave her first solo performance in a Manhattan Sunday School when she was 8 years old. Since then, she has developed her own trademark style of combining standards and classics with well-known hymns.
Her latest recording features songs from ``Feelings/Moonlight Sonata'' to ``I Want to Walk With Jesus'' and ``Nobody Knows the Trouble I See.''
Jenkins-Wisner will be focusing on songs from that recording in her concert Saturday, her husband said. She will be accompanied by bass player Chris White.
Jenkins-Wisner has played in jazz, classical and gospel venues including Carnegie Hall, in concert for the United Negro College Fund and at several European jazz festivals.
Proceeds from the concert in Roanoke will go to a scholarship maintained by the Friends of the Roanoke Symphony in memory of the organization's first president, Marionette Sprauve.
Sprauve taught in Roanoke schools for 43 years and was ``quite a force'' in Roanoke's black music community, said Marian Chappell, spokeswoman for the Friends. The scholarship was endowed in September 1989.
This year the sholarship went to Gloria Warner, a senior at the Shenandoah Music Conservatory. The scholarship is also funding violin lessons for Demecha Dulaney and cello lessons for Abney Jones.
So far, all of the recipients have been black, Chappell said, but the scholarship is not limited to black students.
``We want to reach out to all children with this program,'' she said.
Friends of the Roanoke Symphony Winter Musicale 8 p.m. Saturday, Whitman Auditorium, Virginia Western Community College. Tickets are $20, available at the door or from the Roanoke Symphony box office, 343-9127.
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: headshot of Jenkins-Wisnerby CNB