Coretta Scott King gave up a career in music for civil rights.

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Author: Abdul, Raoul

May I call you by your first name? You may call me Coretta. During the period that we have been working together on the concert, it seems as if we have been friends for a long time. I will be back in New York next week, so I'll see you soon.

This note was sent by airmail special delivery. When I learned of the death of (Coretta Scott King, I took out her file from my collection of treasured documents to share with our readers.

When she and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were both students in Boston, she studied singing at the New England Conservatory of Music. After their marriage, she was so busy concentrating on his career that she put her singing on the back burner. She eventually found a way to combine her singing with the story of their journey in the human rights movement. This resulted in a debut at Town Hall in New York on Sunday, November 15, 1964.

The program was called "A Freedom Concert, A Moving, Sensitive Story of the Freedom Struggle." Assisted by the pianist Jonathan Brice, she delivered her personal narrative with spirituals and other songs which had become associated with the "freedom" marches. It attracted a large, enthusiastic audience and received a featured "review" in Newsweek magazine. She repeated this program around the country with great success.

After the Town Hall, I shall always remember walking with Mrs. King and the music critic from Newsweek carrying her bouquet of flowers back to the Algonquin around the comer where she was staying. Later that evening, I accompanied her to a very modest and lovely party for a few friends at the apartment of the late singer Helen Phillips in the Lincoln Center area. It was a memorable experience.

"It is interesting that Helen Phillips, as well as Sylvia Olden Lee, will be honored posthumously this Saturday evening at 7:30 p.m. at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in the Langston Hughes Auditorium. The occasion is a salute to Black history by the Harlem Opera Theater. At this concert, planned by artistic director Gregory Hopkins, the honoree will be Jacqueline Arlington, eastern region director of community relations at Citibank.

The performers include soprano Laquita Mitchell, Ebony Voices for Education, L'Ensembie Classique and the Unique Musical Society of New York. The Harlem Opera Theater provides performance opportunities for professional and developing gifted singers within Harlem and communities where opera is seldom performed. It also cultivates and expands audience appreciation for classical music through creative programming.

On Monday, February 27, at 1 p.m., the flutist Tia Roper will join pianist Colette Valentine for a concert at St. Paul's Chapel, Fulton and Broadway. The program will include works by Telemann, Kirchner, Bizet, Enesco and Taffanel. Roper is a rising star on the musical scene and has been heard in major venues in New York and elsewhere. Seats will be available free of charge on a first come first served basis.

Janet Wolfe and the Friends of the Housing Authority Symphony will present an evening of chamber music in celebration of Black History Month on Monday, February 27, at 8 p.m. in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Among the performers will be Melissa White, Sanford Allen, Wilson Batista, Harold Jones, Jim Ferraiuolo, Liz Player, Greg Williams, David Miller, Richard Brice, Michael Nicholas and Eugene Moye.

The program will include works by Shostakovish, Hernandez, Beethoven and Mozart. As many of our readers know, the Housing Authority Symphony brought first-rate programs of classical music to various housing projects around the city as well as occasional visits to Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Many of its musicians have gone on to positions in major orchestras around the world.

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By Raoul Abdul