Carolyn Wilkins is a Professor of Ensembles at Berklee College of Music and author of They Raised Me Up: A Black Single Mother and Women Who Inspired Her and Damn Near White: An African American Familys Rise from Slavery to Bittersweet Success available from the University of Missouri Press.

Wilkins is an accomplished jazz pianist, composer, and vocalist with radio and television appearances with her group SpiritJazz, a concert tour of South America as Jazz Ambassador for the US State Department, performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony as a percussionist under Andre Previn, and shows featuring Melba Moore, Nancy Wilson and the Fifth Dimension. Carolyn has performed at Boston's Regattabar, Scullers' Grille, the Globe Jazz Festival and the Many Colors of a Woman Jazz Festival. She appeared at Harvard, Brandeis, and Boston Universities, and was featured in four concerts at Boston's First Night Celebration.

Carolyn authored Tips for Singers: Performing, Auditioning and Rehearsing (Hal Leonard Publications) and released four CD's of original compositions on Tiphereth Records: SpiritJazz I, SpiritJazz II, Healin' Time, and Praise Song. Carolyn composed music for The Search Goes On, a musical performed at First Night 2000, for the NPR adaptation of Langston Hughes Tell Your Mama, poet Phil Bryant's Southside Suite, and for Return, a Meditational Journey of Self Discovery for Black Women. The Wright College Choir, the Mt. St. Joseph Chorale, the Emmanuel College Singers, and the Shiloh Gospel Choir have performed compositions by Carolyn.

www.carolynwilkins.com