Columbia singer Lavenia Nesmith established Jazz in the Mills, a concert series that celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Nesmith has been performing since she was a teenager. Photo by Andria Stafford/Tomorrow's Portraits

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For Columbia jazz singer and concert promoter Lavenia Nesmith, life has been a series of happy accidents.

Take for instance, her start as a singer. When Nesmith (pronounced nee-smith) was eight years old, she was walking to Sunday school and happened to overhear a soloist singing the spiritual “We Are Our Heavenly Father’s Children.”

The song moved Nesmith so deeply that it led her to a life in music. It “ministered to me,” she told the Beacon.

Or consider the call she received from the Kennedy Center in 2003, asking her to sing at the 40th anniversary celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. The call was so unexpected that she thought it was a joke and hung up.

Later that year, though, she appeared on stage at the Kennedy Center to sing “Trouble of the World,” a spiritual made famous by Mahalia Jackson, who performed at the 1963 march. She got a standing ovation.

“It was a pinch-me moment,” Nesmith remembered. “When I think of it now, it brings tears to my eyes.”

Another time, Nesmith had an offhand chat that led to a new job with the state of Maryland, where she spent most of her career.

“To me it was like a magical moment — that’s the way things happen in my life,” she said.

Teenage star

A Washington, D.C., native, Nesmith got her start in music in the early 1960s, when she joined a rhythm and blues band, the El Corols, with fellow students at Shaw, her D.C. junior high school.

Despite their youth, the band became popular. Nesmith once skipped her 8 p.m. curfew to perform at a radio-stationsponsored band contest. Although her band won, she arrived home two hours late to face her angry parents.

In a standoff, she warned them that she loved music so much that she’d run away if she couldn’t perform.

“That’s the only time I became rebellious,” she said.

After that confrontation, her high school’s stern disciplinarian, ROTC sponsor Dr. William Rumsey, said he’d watch over the El Corols, keeping the teens safe when they performed.

His oversight led the band to land its best gig: summertime shows at Carr’s Beach, an Annapolis resort for Black families excluded from segregated beaches. At Carr’s Beach, the El Corols performed during intermissions of concerts with headliners like Bobby Bland, The Temptations, Dionne Warwick and James Brown.

Carroll Henson, who ran the soundboard during WHUR broadcasts from Carr’s Beach, told WRC-TV4 in 2017 that “one of the best groups that ever performed there was from one of the high schools in D.C. That was one heck of a band for teenagers.”

The band also had played at the Waldorf Astoria and at a debutante ball in Southampton, New York.

But perhaps their most legendary performance was in 1963, when they played with Nat King Cole at Eastern High School in D.C. for none other than Robert F. Kennedy, then U.S. Attorney General.

A career outside music

After Nesmith graduated from high school in 1964, she naturally hoped to make music her career. When she started college, she planned to major in voice and minor in piano, but she shifted to major in human development at what’s now the University of the District of Columbia.

With that degree and experience with one of her sons, who is deaf, she joined the staff of Gallaudet University. Later, she became executive director of the International Association of Parents of the Deaf.

That prominent position led to Essence magazine naming Nesmith an Essence Woman in its March 1979 issue.

Soon after that article was published, Nesmith received a call from the Maryland State Department of Education. Nesmith mentioned that her current job required too much travel; she didn’t like being away from her sons. A few weeks later, the state created a position for her as a rehabilitation specialist for Services for the Deaf.

Nesmith spent three decades at that job before retiring in 2013 to return to her music career, dormant since her teen years.

She has performed at Blues Alley, The Chrysalis, the Library of Congress, The Phillips Collection, the DC Jazz Festival, the Cherry Blossom Festival and the Mid- Atlantic Jazz Festival.

Jazz in the Mills

As Nesmith began contemplating retirement, she not only wanted to return to singing but to make music part of life in her new home, Columbia, Maryland.

So, 20 years ago, she founded the concert series she’s likely best known for throughout Howard County: Jazz in the Mills, held four times annually in Oakland Mills’ Other Barn venue.

The series, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, has presented such performers as the Antonio Parker Group and the Eric Byrd Trio.

Nationally, jazz may be seen as in decline, but in the Mills, Nesmith said, “Jazz is being revived.”

Jazz in the Mills’ older audience appreciates her traditional repertoire, Nesmith said, which is influenced by Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson.

This month, Jazz in the Mills presents a concert by singer Linda Harris Cole, radio personality and director of the Harriet Tubman Museum and Education Center. Sponsored by Nesmith and the Oakland Mills Community Association, the March 22 concert includes songs by Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin.

Nesmith serves as emcee for these events and sometimes is the headliner, singing everything from jazz standards like “Trouble in Mind” to spirituals, which are her forte.

Spirituals, a core part of the Black religious experience, she said, “give you a sense of comfort, of peace, tranquility. [They] take all the stress away, if only for a little while.”

A local legend

The Howard County government appreciates Nesmith’s efforts: In 2015, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball bestowed upon her an Honorary Resolution for Jazz in the Mills’s contribution to the county’s cultural life.

Thanks to Nesmith, Jazz in the Mills “made The Other Barn a local jazz hotspot,” said Brigitta Warren, Oakland Mills village manager. “Lavenia has tirelessly volunteered so much of her time, energy and her talent to make it successful.”

Nesmith is “a true gift to our community,” Oakland Mills Community Association Board Chairman Jonathan Edelson said in an email.

“She not only brings her own enormous talent, but that of other outstanding musicians to Jazz in the Mills shows,” several of which he’s attended.

Still singing

Now in her 70s, Nesmith still performs, albeit less often. While growing older brings some singers reduced vocal range, Nesmith plans to keep singing for the long haul. Every other day, she noted, she practices vocal exercises.

In fact, she took to the stage in February, performing for a live audience in Bethesda, Maryland, for Black History Month.

Nesmith performed her one-woman show “A Tribute to Mahalia Jackson: Her Story Told in Dialogue and Song,” which she produced more than 20 years ago. The tribute features stories and 12 songs from the gospel singer’s life.

“I don’t try to imitate; I try to capture the essence of Mahalia,” Nesmith said, tearing up. “It’s like a ministry.”

In addition to that tribute, Nesmith is the creator, producer, promoter and executive director of two other original productions, including “Sistas Can Sang: A Tribute to Female Legends in Jazz and Blues” and “A Tribute to Nancy Wilson.”

If Nesmith has had good fortune, maybe it’s because of what she terms her motto: “Life is a gift, and love is how you use it.”