MERIDIAN, Miss. (Queen City Newsfeed) – The Meridian Symphony Association hosted “A Night To Shine” at the Soulé Steam Works Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum Saturday night.
The event is a part of the association’s annual Soulé UnTuxed gathering.
Saturday night’s event is all about celebrating music from Mississippi natives.
“We started doing this because we wanted to shine a spotlight on some unique venues here in Meridian. Some fabulous architecture and also some of our musicians outside of the regular concert hall, but also we really wanted to talk about those musicians from Meridian and across the South that maybe people may have forgotten about or that we don’t want people to forget about” said Carra Purvis, Executive Director of the Meridian Symphony Association.
Some of those people are better known for working behind the scenes.
“Tonight we’re shining a spotlight on the music of Jimmie Rogers, which I know for a lot of people is kind of commonplace here in Meridian, but what’s not commonplace are the women behind Jimmie Rogers. There are two very special women, Virginia Shine and Elsie McWilliams who helped write a lot of Jimmie’s music, and I didn’t know that, there may be a lot of other people out there who didn’t know that as well. So, we started digging into some history and really finding out about that. They were really some of the brains behind all that fabulous music along with Jimmie, and so we wanted to give them their due as well and let folks know about that,” said Purvis.
Saturday’s event was jam packed with things to do, music to listen to, and people to view.
“We have some of Elsie’s family here with us that traveled all the way from Texas. We’ll have dinner, we have drinks, we have some great auction items too that are very country music related, and so we’re just going to have a great time, enjoy some local musicians along with a fantastic Mississippi native band Brassfield. They are now in Nashville, they just signed a big record deal. So, we are so excited to welcome them back home to Mississippi and to hear them tonight. They really love Jimmie and all that music, and so they wanted to be here with us tonight to share in all of this excitement,” said Purvis.
Organizers said all of this is a coordinated effort to better our community.
“We think it’s really important to continue to shine that spotlight on those in the past because we know that they shape our future as well. We want to really, at the Meridian Symphony, we focus a lot on our education programs so that we can build up the next generation of musicians, and we want to look at those kiddos and say look who came before you. Look at all they did. Look at who you can do. If they can, so can you,” said Purvis.
This isn’t the only event the Meridian Symphony Association has on their agenda.
“So the very next concert that we have coming up is our annual Peppermint Pops concert. That’s our family friendly holiday concert that really kicks off everything here in Meridian for the Christmas season. That’ll be at the Riley Center on December 7th right after the Meridian Christmas Parade. So, after the concert, it’s a fabulous concert to begin with, but afterwards we also have Snow on 5th Street. We have Santa, Mrs. Clause, Elf, cookies and cocoa, It’s just a fantastic family event, and we hope everybody will come and join us for that this year,” said Purvis.
