John Legend

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. CELEBRATION DINNER

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 6 p.m., Show Me Center

Recording artist, singer/songwriter and philanthropist John Legend will present the keynote address, “An Evening with John Legend.” Legend won nine Grammy Awards and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. He launched his career as a session player and vocalist, contributing to best-selling recordings by Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys, Jay-Z and Kanye West before recording his own unbroken chain of Top 10 albums – “Get Lifted” (2004), “Once Again” (2006), and “Evolver” (2008) – each of them reaching #1 on the Billboard R&B/Hip Hop charts.

Legend and the band The Roots released “Wake Up!” in 2010, a compilation of musicfrom the ’60s and ’70s, all with an underlying theme of awareness, engagement and social consciousness, which won three Grammy Awards for Best R&B Album, Best R&B Song and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance.

Throughout his career, Legend worked to make a difference in the lives of others. In2007, he launched the Show Me Campaign, an initiative that uses education to break the cycle ofpoverty. He was awarded the BET Humanitarian of the Year Award, the CARE Humanitarian Award for Global Change and the 2009 Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award from Africare. He stars in “The People Speak,” a film about social change in theUnited States, and partners with Samsung to support education initiatives with a special focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

 Ticket Information
(573) 651-2524
www.semo.edu/mlk