Pinetop Perkins Foundation Youth Scholarships

For the second year in a row The Pinetop Perkins Foundation has received a grant from Morgan Freeman’s Rock River Foundation that will provide scholarships for youth attending the Second Annual Master Class Workshops. The grant will enable the workshop to fund up to four Mississippi youth (ages twelve to twenty-one). In addition, for the first time, the Pinetop Perkins Foundation will offer a scholarship for a youth applicant living outside the state of Mississippi.

Held on the grounds of the historic Hopson Plantation and the Shack Up Inn, the workshops cover two and a half days of instruction from June 15 to 17, capped by a performance Friday evening at Ground Zero Blues Club. In speaking about the their grant support to the Pinetop Perkins Foundation’s Second Annual Master Class Workshop, club owner and accomplished actor Morgan Freeman said, “Our Rock River Foundation board is pleased to support the piano and guitar workshop to be held in 2011 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. After all – there is no better place to learn the blues than at ground zero for blues music! Bill Luckett, Howard Stovall, and I are also pleased that you chose to showcase the workshop talent at our club – Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale.”

Open to “the young and the young at heart,” the event will offer guitar as well as piano workshops. Bob Margolin will direct the guitar workshops and Ann Rabson returns to lead the piano workshops. Pinetop Perkins plans to attend for part of the event. Other major artists will be added to the roster in the coming weeks.

Both the piano and guitar workshops are geared for advanced- and intermediate-level players. The piano workshops will focus on blues forms and blues elements, including blues rhythms, introductions, turnarounds, left-hand grooves, among other “various licks and tricks.”

The title for Bob Margolin’s workshop is “Finding Deep Blues Guitar” and aims to personalize the experience–sharing technique, attitude, as well as exploring the art of listening and helping to perfect performance skills.

Further information, along with registration and scholarship application forms can be found on the Pinetop Perkins Foundation at www.pinetopperkinsfoundation.org, or by calling 662-313-1093.