For more than seven decades, pianist June Faucette-Huff has brought music to life. She’s played for churches throughout Wichita and overseas. The retired music teacher is also known for her tenure with the award-winning spiritual ensemble, ARISE.
Usually on a midday Saturday, you can find June in one of two rehearsals for ARISE, or teaching singers at Wichita St. Paul AME Church as she leans over the keyboard and directs the choir. It's her normal routine on weekends.
“This is my life,” she says, “music is my life. So that's why I promised God I'll always play.”
She learned to play piano as a child in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
“My parents [told] me that at four years old, I got up and started playing the piano while my aunt was playing a song, and I got up [to] play the song right behind her,” Faucette-Huff says. “And that's when they knew that we better give her piano lessons. I just started playing.”
June was voted most talented in high school, and at Langston University, a historically Black college in Oklahoma, where she received her undergrad degree and later her master's.
“I had a wonderful time at college, Langston was a wonderful place for me at that time, because it was right before integration. So, all the Black teachers who are very, very talented, couldn't get the job in the white college[s] so they would go to school, and then they have to go to Black college. And so, I had some wonderful, wonderful professors there. And [legendary R&B group] the Gap Band was there; it was just a flood of beautiful music; talented people who tried to do things.”
At the time, June had a family and a boyfriend — future-husband Larry Huff — who encouraged her to move to Kansas after college. She got a job before leaving Oklahoma in the Wichita Public Schools system.
“Black music teachers/educators could not go any higher than grade school. That’s where they placed you,” she says. “They didn't place you in middle school or high school.”
Eventually June left for other opportunities, including to play piano on a cruise ship, teach in California, before coming back to Wichita as a music teacher in elementary schools, as well as Brooks Middle School — where she created musicals and plays. She received the Apple Award and Distinguished Teacher Award for her work there.
Singer Kim McLaurian, whose stage name is Kimberly Page, was one of her students.
“I remember in the seventh grade, I realized she had a gift,” June says, “and in the seventh grade she did [a rendition of a cover] — ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ by Aretha Franklin. I taught her that, and these are seventh- and eighth-grade kids. The entire audience was completely quiet. You could hear a pin drop and that little girl sang her heart out and they just gave her a standing ovation. They couldn't believe it. She was that talented in the seventh grade.”
“June Faucette is the main reason why I sing in public,” McLaurian says. “When I went to Brooks, she had me singing jazz and songs from musicals. It just kind of broadened my horizons as far as what I could sing publicly. So, she is the reason why I'm a professional singer.”
International jazz singer Joan Minor, June’s sister-in-law, is also aware of her gifts.
“June has played with me in Paris,” Minor says. “I directed a gospel choir there for a French technical school and June came over, and with just not much preliminary at all, she does what a fine outstanding artist does: She just laid down everything that was needed, and it was wonderful. This was for the anniversary of a church called the American Church in Paris, which is the oldest American church on foreign soil.”
“Number one, she can play anything,” says Shawn Chastain, the executive coordinator of fine arts for Wichita Public Schools and the director for the spiritual ensemble, ARISE.
“Whether she hears it, whether she reads it,” Chastain says. “She is a master at then taking — whether it's through the ear or through the eye — that piece of music and putting it to glorious sound. So, she can read anything. Then she can also arrange anything. If the piece isn't in a particular key that fits that solo’s range, June can change it at the drop of a dime.”
June also has an affinity for spirituals.
“I love them, they're a lost art,” she says. “It’s our culture. And when I go overseas, they go crazy about the rituals. They love all the spirituals.”
Several musicians in Wichita have been trained by June and enjoy her innate ability to play incredibly well.
“My drummer Larry says that wherever my hands fall, that's <laugh> where I start playing,” June says. “He says that's phenomenal. I can just play in any key. So that's a gift from God. That's what it is. My grandmother could play any song on the black keys.”
And June continues to keep pace with her schedule of working with church ensembles and with ARISE here in Wichita or at engagements across the country.
“Some people burn out. I've never burned out. I haven't. I always tried to keep everything fresh and new wherever I go. I'm very lucky. I have neuropathy in my legs. And it's it makes it difficult for me to walk. They think that I should have it in my hands. …So, God has blessed me unbelievably. Yes, he really has. …Well, I told him I said, ‘Lord … I will keep playing as long as you allow my hands to move. And I'm going to do the best I can with what I've got.’ I really enjoy what I do. That's what it is. I enjoy it. And it's something that makes me happy.”
