Camden High's drumline to make special appearance at Marian Anderson renaming event

The award-winning Camden High School Mighty Marching Panthers Band is putting on a show at a prestigious event on June 8 in honor of Philadelphia musical and civil rights icon Marian Anderson.

The band's drumline will perform on South Broad Street in Philadelphia prior to a gala event. The percussion section will help celebrate Verizon Hall being renamed Marian Anderson Hall. Verizon Hall is in the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, and it is the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Camden’s drumline will help escort guests from a pre-concert reception to the Kimmel Center for the Great Stages Gala and concert.

“It’s a big deal for us to be selected, especially after COVID, us rebuilding the program, and getting these young folks back in the swing of things with performance and arts,” said marching band director Jamal Dickerson.

Dickerson expects the performance to begin at about 5:45 p.m. The drum line will be small, at five to 10 people.

“It’s really cool for them to select the young folks from Camden so that we can inspire other young folks from the Camden and Philadelphia area to go for it, that by participating in arts programs like this that you never know when you may be able to be part of the fold of the fabric of such illustrious artists as Marian Anderson and to be part of and participating in a program of that magnitude,” Dickerson said.

The official dedication ceremony takes place at 2 p.m. at Commonwealth Plaza in the Kimmel Center.

The Great Stages Gala Concert will be at 8 p.m. at Marian Anderson Hall. That concert will feature New Jersey native and actress/rapper Queen Latifah, singer and actress Audra McDonald, jazz pianist Marcus Roberts, soprano Angel Blue and more, along with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Dickerson, a Camden native who teaches in the city, is in his third year of being band director. He began his position coming out of the pandemic with a depleted marching band.

“It had seen a few changes after my friend Mr. (Hassan) Sabree went into administration, that was a few years pre-COVID,” said Dickerson, who won the Milken Educator Award in 2007, a high honor in education. “The band kind of took a little turn. It was a rebuild. There were seven kids in the band (when he took over). We’ve gotten it to where at its highest, we’ve had 67. It’s been growing.”

Now, they will be part of a historic event.

A $25 million philanthropic gift from Richard Worley and Leslie Miller made the renaming possible, according to a news release from the Philadelphia Orchestra when the renaming was first announced in February.

Worley has been a member of The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Board of Trustees since 1997. Miller, his wife, is a former Kimmel Center trustee and a past acting president of the Kimmel Center, it said.

“The legacy of Philadelphia native Marian Anderson is inscribed in the modern history of civil rights in America, and in musical history — from the prejudiced rejection of her artistry to the knowledge that she was one of the greatest voices of the 20th century,” said Philadelphia Orchestra Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Nézet-Séguin said the orchestra has dedicated itself for years “to creating a more representative art form through the music we perform."

“Now, we are proud to take this even further, to honor Marian Anderson with the first major concert venue named in her honor — and one of only a few in the world named for an artist, and we will perform with the joy of her ongoing presence in Marian Anderson Hall,” Nézet-Séguin said.

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This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Camden High's drumline honored to play at prestigious Philly event