Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones (January 5, 1868 or 1869 – June 24, 1933) was an American soprano. She sometimes was called "The Black Patti" in reference to Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Jones' repertoire included grand opera, light opera, and popular music. Trained at the Providence Academy of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music, Jones made her New York debut in 1888 at Steinway Hall, and four years later she performed at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison. She eventually sang for four consecutive presidents and the British royal family, and met with international success. Besides the United States and the West Indies, Jones toured in South America, Australia, India, southern Africa, and Europe. The highest-paid African-American performer of her time, later in her career she founded the Black Patti Troubadours (later renamed the Black Patti Musical Comedy Company), a musical and acrobatic act made up of 40 jugglers, comedians, dancers and a chorus of 40 trained singers. She remained the star of the Famous Troubadours for around two decades while they established their popularity in the principal cities of the United States and Canada, Jones retired from performing in 1915. In 2013, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. Early life and education Matilda Sissieretta Joyner was born on January 5, 1869, in a house on Bart Street in Portsmouth, Virginia, United States, to Jeremiah Malachi Joyner, an African Methodist Episcopal minister and Henrietta Beale, a singer in a church choir and washerwoman. Her father had formerly been enslaved, but was educated and literate. She was the oldest of three children, although her siblings died when they were young. Matilda Joyner was nicknamed as Sissy or Tilly by her family and friends, and began singing around the house at a young age. When she was six years old, her family moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where she began singing at an early age in her father's Pond Street Baptist Church. She attended Meeting Street and Thayer Schools. In 1883, Joyner began the formal study of music at the Providence Academy of Music. She studied with Ada Baroness Lacombe. In the late 1880s, Jones was accepted at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, studying under Flora Batson of the Bergen Star Company. She also studied at the Boston Conservatory. Musical career Debut and breakthrough concerts On October 29, 1885, Jones gave