FOOD FOR THE SOUL
Music, food and wine come together to raise money for Stax Music Academy.
Last week, a group of kids showed up at Napa Café in East Memphis. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the restaurant was closed to the public. But they’ll go back this Sunday, and they’ll pick up their horns and lift their voices while diners pick up their forks and lift their glasses.
The kids are students at Stax Music Academy, and the combination of music, food and wine will inaugurate what is planned to be the annual fundraiser “Heart Full of Soul.”
As big ideas often do, this one started with a simple conversation. Tiffany Werne, the regional sales manager for Frederick Wildman & Sons Importers, was eating lunch at Napa Café.
“We started to bounce some ideas around of other things to do at dinners except just wine and food,” said Napa general manager Rusty Prudhon. “Music came up.”
The same day, FOX-13 journalist Mearl Purvis came in, and Prudhon told her about the idea.
“I told her if we were going to do anything with music, I wanted it to be with Stax,” he said.
Purvis called Kirk Whalum, who was interested, so Prudhon went to see him, and the planning began in earnest.
The hard work culminates in a sixcourse dinner, with nine wines, paired to music from the Stax portfolio performed by the students. The dinners will be held at 6:30 p.m. Sunday and Monday at the restaurant (a 30-minute reception with a silent auction precedes each dinner); tickets are $125.
This isn’t just background music.
“We picked the music first,” Prudhon said. “We broke the music down.”
Pairing was made in clever but somewhat obvious ways, as in the case of Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour.” The 1965 single was recorded at Stax and was released on Atlantic Records. The dish? Atlantic sole.
The connection between the food and the music might be more elusive with other courses. A medley that includes two Otis Redding songs matches three flavors — bitter, savory and sweet — with music about breaking up, rebounding and love.
“It’s not just about playing music in the background,” said P. Ashley Rix, the chocolatier who is making truffles for the dinners. “The music is the seasoning.”
The truffle course is inspired by The Beatles song “Savoy Truffle,” from
This gets a little Kevin Bacon-y, but it works: Following the release of The Beatles album Stax’s Booker T. & the M.G.’s recorded an album that covered the Beatles songs and featured a cover image of the four band members crossing the road, just as The Beatles did on their album.
“The menu is the album cover,” Prudhon said. “I’m writing liner notes to explain it all.”
Last week, Justin Merrick, the operations and vocal director for Stax Academy, gathered the students around the bar that sits, slightly elevated, between two rooms of the restaurant. Pointing at each singer on cue, he led them through a rehearsal of an a capella performance that includes the well-known “Whatcha See is Whatcha Get,” recorded by The Dramatics.
Their voices rang clear as Merrick reminded them to smile and project, giving directions in triplicate: “Spread out, spread out, spread out,” and “Look up, Vocalist Haley Harris, 17, rehearses with other Stax Music Academy students at Napa Café. Proceeds from the “Heart Full of Soul” benefits will help fund scholarships and projects at the music academy. look up, look up.” He’s excited. “This is so special, because events like this, with food and wine, are not typically paired with music,” he said.
And he appreciates that the money will go to fund scholarships and projects at the academy (which is an after-school program, different from the Soulsville Charter School).
Brenae Johnson, 13, is a vocalist. In ninth grade, she’s one of the younger students who will perform at the event.
“We’ve done some amazing stuff, but we’ve never done anything like this,” she said.
The event was organized in just a few months, but Prudhon said that they’ll start to work right away on next year’s event.
“We plan to do it annually, at back-to-school time, to give the school a nice donation,” he said.
“It’s funny, because you know how everything is so local these days. Everyone is into local, local. Well, this is really local, because there’s so much music here.”