Grenoldo Frazier

GRENOLDO FRAZIER, actor and composer, is a Wilmington native who moved to New York in 1972 as a pianist for two touring shows, “Journey Into Blackness” and “Harlem Heyday,” an anthology of African-American music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was featured as Barnaby Tucker on Broadway and the national tour of the Pearl Bailey/Billy Daniels hit Hello, Dolly! In the ‘80s Grenoldo won the off-Broadway Audelco Award as composer of Deadwood Dick and music director of the national tour of Your Arms Too Short to Box With God. Later he toured arenas including Madison Square Garden as Phineas T. Barnswallow, a W.C. Fields character in Sesame Live, and was composer and musical director of Mamma I Want to Sing, the longest running gospel musical, and Moms Mabley at the Astor Place Theatre. Frazier’s other credits include the revue Billy, Lena and The Duke: A Night of Ellington Music! (as Duke Ellington). The 90’s found him winning dual Audelco Awards as musical director for James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones and as an actor in Robert Johnson – Trick the Devil. He toured Europe as a singer/dancer in Andre Heller’s Body and Soul. In recent years he has been an artist-in-residence at NC State, Harvard Divinity School with Dr. Gavin Moses, and Penn State-Harrisburg, and has performed all over the country in clubs and theaters. Grenoldo was the recipient of the Black Arts Alliance’s 2011 Living Legend Award., and in 2014 was given his star on the Wilmington Walk of Fame. This is his fourth appearance at the NC Jazz Festival.