On Saturday, December 14, 2024, at 1:00 pm, the Greater Kansas City Black History Study Group held its monthly meeting and annual Dr. Carter G. Woodson Birthday Celebration at the Black Archives of Mid-America.
To continue Dr. Woodson’s legacy of educating the public about Black life, history, and culture, the program closed out this year’s theme of African Americans and the Arts with featured guest speaker and acclaimed jazz artist, Ms. Angela Hagenbach who discussed her career and life trajectory, from professional modeling to renown jazz artist.
Ms. Hagenbach has worked and recorded with such jazz greats as Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath, Russell Malone, and Frank Foster. She represented the U.S. twice as a Cultural Jazz Ambassador and has performed at numerous festivals and concert halls around the world. She has produced and released multiple recordings to national critical acclaim on Amazon Records. Two of her compositions are featured in LAST WILL, a film starring Tatum Oneil, James Brolin, and Peter Coyote. As a musical theater artist, she has costarred in SOPHISTICATED LADIES, NINE, and ONCE ON THIS ISLAND for Spinning Tree Theater. She has written and directed musical versions of The Maltese Falcon, The Great Gatsby, and JazzAlice, a re-envisioned romp of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland set to the music of John Coltrane for the national libraries Big Read programs, funded in part by NEH and NEA.
In this current chapter of her life, Ms. Hagenbach is the founder of the Black Ancestors Awareness Campaign (BAAC), a multi-faceted organization that reintroduces the lives and contributions of Weston, Missouri’s pre-civil war Black community, and their descendants. She serves on the Executive Board and is a Trustee of the Weston Historical Museum. Hagenbach’s current project, Folks of Weston, is a historical fiction manuscript about her maternal ancestor’s late 1830s arrival to Missouri enslaved.
Attendees learned about the life of Dr. Woodson and celebrated with refreshments and door prizes.
See images below.