Leon Russell Tribute Concert on PBS
The concert at Will Rogers High School on Feb. 9, 2019, dedicating the restored Baldwin grand piano and paying tribute to the career of Leon Russell (nee Claude Russell Bridges), has been distributed by the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) to all Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Public Television affiliates as an offering. This was originally produced under the auspices of the Will Rogers High School Community Foundation in collaboration with Teresa Knox and The Church Studio.
According to Dick Risk, president of the Will Rogers Stage Foundation, “the concert was recorded for television. For various reasons, among them the pandemic, this program had never appeared on television. (We cancelled a premiere showing of the television show at the onset of COVID.) As the producer and authorized representative of the Will Rogers High School Community Foundation, I considered this as unfinished business since donations were made specifically to cover the cost of the television project.
“Earlier this year, we submitted ‘LEON RUSSELL: The Tribute’ to NETA, which is our gateway to PBS, on a non-revenue basis. The Will Rogers Stage Foundation covered the costs of mandatory closed captioning, reformatting the program for PBS, and payment of the fees to NETA to upload to all PBS and Public Television affiliates.”
It is up to each affiliate station or network to select “LEON RUSSELL: The Tribute” for airing or other form of distribution to its audience. The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) will air the program on Thursday, August 1, at 7 p.m.
The Will Rogers Stage Foundation’s “Classics of Lerner & Loewe” concert on October 29, 2023, also produced by Risk, was recorded for television and is being submitted for PBS as two one-hour programs featuring songs from five of the duo’s most popular shows: Camelot, Paint Your Wagon, Gigi, Brigadoon, and My Fair Lady. The music was played by the Will Rogers Stage Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Brad Henderson, and sung by three classically trained opera veterans—John Kaneklides, tenor, Susan Hellman Spatafora, soprano, and Elliott Wulff, baritone.
The Folk Legacy Trio concert on April 14, 2024, was also recorded for PBS and will be released later this year. This concert featured hits of the ’60s and ’70s Great Folk Era.
