JAZZED FOR POPS
For Queen Latifah, ‘exciting’ opportunity
Activist, music artist and Hollywood star Queen Latifah fulfilled a professional dream by performing with the Boston Pops to help kick off the spring concert season.
Latifah said she’s been waiting a long time to join the Pops onstage along with her eightpiece jazz band. She checked off that box last night.
Latifah, or Dana Elaine Owens, credited her parents for her interest in music during an interview on Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show hours before she took the stage.
“My dad only played jazz. Every time I got in his car, from the time that I was born, there was nothing on the radio but jazz. And of course I fell in love with all the musicals as a kid,” Latifah said.
“It’s wonderful to be invited into a building like this, to play with an amazing group of people led by Keith Lockhart,” she added. “This is exciting.”
Lockhart, conductor of the Boston Pops, said booking Latifah and her team has been a work in progress.
“I’ve really wanted to work with her for years because I really respected her talent for a while,” Lockhart said on the Herald Radio show. “She’s really just a great jazz singer, kind of a straight-down-the-middle American standards singer.”
Latifah, who is currently filming the music drama series “Star” for Fox in Atlanta, said the opportunity to perform on stage in Boston is just the start of getting on stage more.
“For me it’s always about time. Because I’m doing so many things that I never get the time to get out and perform as much as I would like to,” Latifah said, adding she is drawn to live performances.