tag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:/blogs/classical-era-ca-1730-1820?p=2Black Composers2021-02-06T11:36:43-05:00Ritaporfiris.comfalsetag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/65413572021-02-06T11:36:43-05:002024-01-10T07:39:10-05:00Avril Coleridge-Taylor<p>It’s been 2 weeks since I received my copies of the (out-of-print) International Dictionary of Black Composers, and I have been reading a few entries every day. The book was edited by the late Helen Walker-Hill, musicologist and wife of composer George Walker. It is an extensive two volume collection of composers spanning centuries, whose music should be celebrated more. Unfortunately so much of this music was not performed in our era of easy-to-access recordings, and it is difficult to find musical examples of these composers’ works. </p>
<p>One such example is that of Avril (born Gwendolen) Coleridge-Taylor (1903-1998), daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. (He also had a son, Hiawatha.) Her innate musical ability gave her an especially close relationship with her father, until his death when she was nine years old. She briefly attended the Guildhall School of Music and wrote her first composition at age 12. At 15 she attended the Trinity College of Music, studying composition, piano and voice. Her early works show evidence of her collaborations during those years both with her brother and flutist Joseph Slater; several works for flute and piano and popular songs for voice are from this period. </p>
<p>It was after her first marriage ended that she changed her name to Avril, while working on her first orchestral work, “To April.” This was performed in 1931 and marked her first appearance as a conductor, an amazing feat for any young woman at the time. Her formal conducting debut was at Royal Albert Hall 2 years later. She later became the first female conductor of the H.M.S. Royal Marines and a frequent guest with the BBC and London Symphony Orchestras. In 1952 her tour to South Africa stretched into a five year residency, but when the government there learned of her black heritage, she was not allowed to work as a composer or conductor. </p>
<p>Her compositions are for orchestra, solo instrument and orchestra, choir and orchestra, solo instrument and piano (most often flute or violin, but also cello), solo piano and harpsichord, and chamber works. There is an especially intriguing one titled “God’s Remembrance” for soprano, harp, violin, viola, and cello. At the time of composition, they were being commissioned and performed by both regional and large ensembles of the time: Boston Symphony, BBC Orchestra, as well as the Coleridge-Taylor Symphony Orchestra (which grew out of her founding the Coleridge-Taylor Musical Society with her second husband) and the Malcolm Sargent Symphony Orchestra which she also founded. It is difficult to find any recording of these works, let alone the music. Harmonic analysis of a few of the works in the International Dictionary of Black Composers is intriguing but frustrating, like describing the plot of a book one wants to read but then can’t find. Around the time of her second divorce, she also started using the pseudonym “Peter Riley” under which the Fantasie for Violin and Piano was written in 1949, but the music remains elusive under either name. </p>
<p>It’s interesting to speculate on whether she used the pseudonym to escape the ramifications of being a Coleridge-Taylor, or being a black woman composer/conductor, or both. </p>
<p>Just revived during the pandemic by the Chineke! Orchestra is her Sussex Lanscape Op. 27. It is at the beginning of this concert filmed in Sept 2020 at the Southbank Royal Festival Hall. I hope more organizations unearth and perform her music. #blackcomposers #avrilcoleridgetaylor #womencomposers </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/OhT3NpBR4Zc" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/OhT3NpBR4Zc">https://youtu.be/OhT3NpBR4Zc</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/65143782021-01-05T20:22:11-05:002024-01-04T02:38:20-05:00Millicent James<p>It has been my pleasure throughout the great Pandemic Summer and Fall 2020 to have been working with a group of British women composers for an upcoming livestream for the Spitalfields Festival. I’d like to feature a few of them here; they are the latest in the up-and coming set of composers that are able to seamlessly meld “traditional” classical training with music or soundscapes that have special meaning to them. </p>
<p>The music of Millicent James intertwines colorful elements of gospel, jazz, soul, contemporary classical, ambient and afro music to create an amalgamation of sonorities. Millicent is inspired by the depths of the human imagination and subconscious evidenced by the works of Japanese Animator, Hayao Miyazaki. Her musical output is multi-faceted and as a composer, cellist and vocalist, Millicent not only regularly sings with the RBC Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra and RBC Jazz Orchestra, but she also continues to compose and perform her own works. Millicent has received musical tuition from prominent composers and musicians such as Errollyn Wallen, Andrew Toovey, Joe Cutler, Richard Ayres, John Turnville, Edward Puddick and Percy Pursglove. </p>
<p>Of her music, critics have said “a thoroughgoing disregard for genre makes for an unbridled ride,” and “the topic might be serious but the music has a light touch.” </p>
<p>Her commission for Spitalfields that will be premiered is for solo violin, and you have to love a composer that tells the performer to “go for it.” With just that instruction, the piece now incorporates dancing, wigs, french fries, and footage from a well known franchise. </p>
<p>We hope you will be intrigued enough to join us for the premiere on Dec. 5; but in the meantime here is “Let the Rain Fall.” </p>
<p>https://open.spotify.com/track/4jOWkoB6qI5209ElEf2BBW</p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/65143772021-01-05T20:17:48-05:002024-01-04T02:42:06-05:00Bobbie-Jane Gardner<p>The second in my series of the new generation of women composers is Bobbie-Jane Gardner. I had the pleasure of working with her on her commissioned piece for solo viola, which was premiered at the Spitalfields Music festival in December 2020. My favorite moment was getting asked to sound more like a penguin. </p>
<p>She is a composer, arranger and producer with a wide range of styles and genres, who is actively involved in her community in Birmingham, England. </p>
<p>Bobbie has received commissions from Uchenna Dance Co., Vocab Dance Co., mac arts, Punch Records, Vivid Projects, Sound and Music, Fierce Festival, Grand Union, Spitafleilds Music, The Longbridge Public Art Project, The Gospel Revisited Project and Heart n Soul. </p>
<p>She ran for-Wards - an ambitious two year, city wide music programm and large scale artistic collaboration with Birmingham residents and creatives to create a musical ode to the city, resulting in 10 original musical works which responded to and reflected the communities and stories captured in Birmingham’s 10 districts, thereby creating a cultural sound map of the UK’s super-diverse second city. </p>
<p>Bobbie recently worked as shadow curator and lead artist on Twelve Tones - a citywide participatory art project engaging communities across Birmingham and Solihull exploring sound in relation to place and time in a series of artist-led workshops and sharing events. </p>
<p>She has recently completed a PhD at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and teaches composition at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Junior Conservatoire. </p>
<p>https://soundcloud.com/bobbiegardner/tapeworm</p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/64604662020-10-21T12:35:30-04:002024-01-04T02:43:39-05:00Jessie Montgomery<p>This piece was performed in our weekly chamber music masterclass at Hartt recently. I'm always thrilled when our students reach make it a priority to play music of living composers. #blackcomposers #womencomposers </p>
<p>The entry is reposted from the composer's website, and the video is with the composer performing her work. </p>
<p>Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, placing her squarely as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). </p>
<p>Jessie was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s during a time when the neighborhood was at a major turning point in its history. Artists gravitated to the hotbed of artistic experimentation and community development. Her parents – her father a musician, her mother a theater artist and storyteller – were engaged in the activities of the neighborhood and regularly brought Jessie to rallies, performances, and parties where neighbors, activists, and artists gathered to celebrate and support the movements of the time. It is from this unique experience that Jessie has created a life that merges composing, performance, education, and advocacy. </p>
<p>Since 1999, Jessie has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African-American and Latinx string players. She currently serves as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble. She was a two-time laureate of the annual Sphinx Competition and was awarded a generous MPower grant to assist in the development of her debut album, Strum: Music for Strings (Azica Records). She has received additional grants and awards from the ASCAP Foundation, Chamber Music America, American Composers Orchestra, the Joyce Foundation, and the Sorel Organization. </p>
<p>Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Five Slave Songs (2018) commissioned for soprano Julia Bullock by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Records from a Vanishing City (2016) for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Caught by the Wind (2016) for the Albany Symphony and the American Music Festival, and Banner (2014) – written to mark the 200th anniversary of The Star-Spangled Banner – for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation. </p>
<p>In the 2019-20 season, new commissioned works will be premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the National Choral Society, and ASCAP Foundation. Jessie is also teaming up with composer-violinist Jannina Norpoth to reimagine Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha; it is being produced by Volcano Theatre and co-commissioned by Washington Performing Arts, Stanford University, Southbank Centre (London), National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Additionally, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony will all perform Montgomery’s works this season. </p>
<p>The New York Philharmonic has selected Jessie as one of the featured composers for their Project 19, which marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting equal voting rights in the United States to women. Other forthcoming works include a nonet inspired by the Great Migration, told from the perspective of Montgomery’s great-grandfather William McCauley and to be performed by Imani Winds and the Catalyst Quartet; a cello concerto for Thomas Mesa jointly commissioned by Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, and The Sphinx Organization; and a new orchestral work for the National Symphony. </p>
<p>Jessie began her violin studies, at the Third Street Music School Settlement, one of the oldest community organizations in the country. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and currently a member of the Catalyst Quartet, she continues to maintain an active performance career as a violinist appearing regularly with her own ensembles, as well as with the Silkroad Ensemble and Sphinx Virtuosi. </p>
<p>Jessie’s teachers and mentors include Sally Thomas, Ann Setzer, Alice Kanack, Joan Tower, Derek Bermel, Mark Suozzo, Ira Newborn, and Laura Kaminsky. She holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a Graduate Fellow in Music Composition at Princeton University. </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/-ZmVRWjpNxw" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/-ZmVRWjpNxw">https://youtu.be/-ZmVRWjpNxw</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/64351822020-09-16T14:21:38-04:002023-12-10T13:47:42-05:00Eddie South<p>Edward Otha “Eddie” South was born in the confusingly named town of Louisiana, Missouri in 1904. Encyclopedic entries on Eddie South are short and consistent, being content to merely state that if it were not for the universal racism of the time, this classically trained musician would have been a “top classical violinist.” This carries an element of truth, but what we should examine more is the assumption in this statement that western classical music, composed and performed by mostly white people, is the height of culture to which all musicians must aspire, and go no further. </p>
<p>Regardless, Eddie did manage to straddle both worlds of classical and jazz, incorporating swing, Latin, and Romany/Hungarian styles in his compositions; I like to think that in contemporary times he would have been more celebrated, and would have been able to be even more experimental with his musical style . In the 1920s, he performed often with Erskine Tate (in whose early band was a young Louis Armstrong) and Jimmy Wade. A tour from 1928-31 brought him to Budapest and exposed him to Hungarian and Roma (gypsy) music; upon his return to the States, his first record was a “hot” arrangement of the Jenó Hubay piece “Hejre Kati,” which became his signature tune. In listening to a recording of it, I was led to more of his “hot” versions of Kreisler violin standards, which I am including here. After hearing “Praeludium and Allegro” this way once, I can’t imagine it any other way. </p>
<p>At some point he studied at the Paris Conservatory, and his 1937 Paris sessions with Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, and Michel Warlop remain his most highly regarded jazz recordings. A 1937 recording of Bach’s Double Concerto with Grapelli is one of the earliest known jazz interpretations of Bach’s music. Throughout all the playing, you can hear his utter mastery of the instrument and ease at “fusion” of styles that ultimately creates something bigger than the sum of all its parts. Eddie South continued to perform and record into the 1950s, and died on April 25, 1962. #blackcomposers #jazzviolin</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/JV-p_IcQpJY" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/JV-p_IcQpJY">https://youtu.be/JV-p_IcQpJY</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/64252032020-09-04T17:00:22-04:002023-12-10T11:52:37-05:00Daniel Bernard Roumain<p>Daniel Bernard Roumain, (DBR) born 1970 to Haitian-American parents, is a classically trained composer/violinist and activist. His compositions and arrangements, which have been performed by the orchestras of Dallas, Des Moines, Memphis, San Antonio, St. Louis, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the New World Symphony, the Del Sol and the Lark Quartet, are noted for blending funk, rock, hip-hop and classical music into an “energetic and experiential sonic form.” He received his early music education from the Dillard Center for the Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, received his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and earned a doctorate in composition from the University of Michigan. He has written for orchestra, chamber, opera, as well as rock songs and electronic music. </p>
<p>Being a classically trained composer and performer has shaped his perspective. The following is an excerpted conversation with Bill T Jones: </p>
<p>“I’m a composer. I like to think I’m an American composer. But oftentimes I’m referred to as a black American composer, of Haitian descent, or a dreadlocked violinist. These are little minefields. In some ways, I’m being set up. As much as classical music has a diversity to it, I don’t know if it’s necessarily diverse. When I say classical music, I’m talking about the industry: the musicians, the composers, the administrators, the audience. I’d like to participate in that arena on their terms. </p>
<p>To me, my Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes were a response to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, to Glass’s Music in Twelve Parts, to Bartók’s Microcosmos. Composers do that systematically, looking at each key. Mine happened to look at each key, but in a particular musical vernacular…I’m approaching it as music that I am listening to and am well-versed in, a language that I grew up with. Hip-hop music is about the same age that I am. [My] Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes tries to speak to and legitimize black folk music in the same way that Bartók tried to legitimize Hungarian folk music, and Stravinsky tried to legitimize Russian folk music. </p>
<p>The Beatles set out to emulate black music, and they created something that was not black music. Philip Glass set out to emulate rock music, and he created something that was not rock music, something that’s very personal. And he created a new audience for it. I’m not setting out to create a hybrid form of hip-hop and classical music. I am simply, as a proud product of the iPod generation, emulating all the music that I’m listening to and have listened to. It’s classical music forms and the totality of black music expression: rock, soul, hip-hop, jazz. That’s maybe the best definition. The problem is when I walk into a room with an orchestra and my score says, not in Italian, play this as though Prince were playing it, fiercely funky.” </p>
<p>#blackcomposers #chambermusic</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/6As16bev638" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/6As16bev638">https://youtu.be/6As16bev638</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/64229792020-09-02T11:38:12-04:002023-12-10T11:57:18-05:00T.J. Anderson<p>(Excerpted from the composer’s webpage) </p>
<p>Thomas Jefferson (T.J.) Anderson was born August 17, 1928 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania and received degrees from West Virginia State College, Penn State University, and a Ph.D in Composition from the University of Iowa. He taught at Tufts University, serving as Chairman of the Department of Music, Professor of Music and Professor of Music Emeritus. He also holds several honorary degrees. He now lives in Atlanta, Georgia where he devotes full time to writing music. </p>
<p>He studied composition with George Ceiga, Philip Bezanson, Richard Hervig, and Darius Milhaud. Anderson is well known for his orchestration of Scott Joplin's opera, Treemonisha which premiered in Atlanta during his tenure with the Atlanta Symphony in 1972. Although it was composed in 1911, this was the first time the work had appeared on stage in its full version. </p>
<p>His three operas, Soldier Boy, Soldier, Walker and Slip Knot, were all commissions, and follow his tendency to write based on historical events. In program notes for a concert of T.J. Anderson's music honoring the 100th year of Tufts University's Department of Music, it says: "T.J. Anderson, as all the world knows him, has spent a long and distinguished career composing music reflecting a global awareness of human experience in the twentieth century, synthesizing Eastern and Western classical traditions with the Black experience in America. His works reveal inspiration from a variety of classical styles ranging from Purcell to Alban Berg, and techniques and forms ranging from the serially rigorous to the freely improvisatory, all arrayed in a stylistic panorama that is wholly "his own". Elliott Schwartz in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music states, “Many African-American composers of “classical” music are confronted by a unique set of experiences – influences from two worlds, so to speak. Thomas Jefferson Anderson has successfully balanced both; his music speaks to, and draws from, the heritage of European Art Music and the culture of Black America.” “T.J.Anderson has characterized his role as a composer as that of a musical anthropologist, that is a documentor, interpreter, and re-creator of culture” (Greg A. Steinke: International Dictionary of Black Composers, 1999). </p>
<p>He has had collaborations with Leon Forrest, writer and Richard Hunt, sculptor. A number of his works have been premiered in the artist's studio. As a lecturer, consultant, and visiting composer, he has appeared in institutions in the United States, Brazil, Germany, France, and Switzerland. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Arts, the Djerassi Foundation, the National Humanities Center (as their first composer), and a scholar-in- residence at the Rockefeller Center for the Creative Arts, Bellagio, Italy. Other honors include an honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and a Rockefeller Center Foundation grant, Composer-in- Residence Program (with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Shaw, Conductor). At his 60th birthday celebration at Harvard University, letters from Robert Shaw and Sir Michael Tippett were read. In March, 1997, he was honored as a founder and first president of the National Black Music Caucus with concert of his music. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, May 18, 2005. </p>
<p>He has written for almost every classical genre: opera, symphonic, choral/vocal, solo instrumental, and lots of chamber music. Not much is recorded, but it deserves to be. #challenge #Blackcomposers</p>
<p><a contents="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNcNC6OPcIk" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNcNC6OPcIk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNcNC6OPcIk</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/64202892020-08-29T15:45:45-04:002023-12-10T11:57:18-05:00Howard Swanson<p>In October 1978, Leontyne Price performed for an enthusiastic audience at the Carter White House. “Dazzling a White House audience” read the Washington Post review the next day. Her program included arias by Haendel, Puccini, and Strauss’ Four Last Songs; but it was the performance of American composers’ works that brought down the house. Among the American composers represented was Howard Swanson, who would pass away just weeks later. </p>
<p>Howard Swanson was best known for his art songs based on the poetry of Langston Hughes and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, but he composed three symphonies, music for strings, piano music, a suite for cello and piano, and other symphonic and chamber works. He was one of the composers who was on Nadia Boulanger’s roster of students, yet started his professional life working first as a postmaster in Cleveland, and then with the Internal Revenue Service. </p>
<p>Swanson was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1907, to a musically educated family, and all three boys ended up going to college. Although he sang often with his mother in church, his formal music study as a pianist began after the family relocated to Cleveland, Ohio in 1916. The year he graduated from high school, his father died, and it was up to Howard to work to support the family. He spent the 10 years after high school in the Cleveland Post Office. </p>
<p>As his circumstances improved, Swanson decided to continue his education. He attended the Cleveland Institute of Music on piano, and where his teachers, aware of his talent, persuaded him to work at night to be able to take a full course of study during the day. Yet trying to hold a full time job and become a concert pianist took its toll; Swanson realized he simply didn’t have the hours he needed to practice and began to study composition. </p>
<p>In 1938, Swanson received a Rosenwald Fellowship which allowed him to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and planned to pursue further graduate studies there. But in 1941 he was forced to leave as the German Army overran France, and upon his return to the United States got a job with the Internal Revenue Service while studying and composing music on the side. It wasn’t until 1950, at the age of 43, that Howard Swanson produced his first significant composition, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” a musical set to Langston Hughes’s famous poem of that name. </p>
<p>The composition was performed in Carnegie Hall by Marian Anderson that year, and then his songs began to be performed with increasing regularity. When Dimitri Mitropoulos heard his music, he immediately programmed the work “Short Symphony” (Symphony No. 2) to be premiered by the New York Philharmonic that same year. In 1952, a grant from the National Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship enabled him to return to Europe. He lived in Paris and in Vienna for the next 14 years, returning to New York in 1966. </p>
<p>Howard Swanson’s style was neoclassical, drawing mostly from western European styles but incorporating African American styles with the addition of rhythmic complexity and syncopation. His friendship with poet Langston Hughes let to the creation of many songs; despite the poet’s friendships and collaborations with numerous other composers, Swanson’s are considered by many to be the definitive interpretations of the poet's work. </p>
<p>#blackcomposers </p>
<p>Night Song (to a poem by Langston Hughes) </p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>In the dark </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Before the tall Moon came </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Little short Dusk </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Was walking Along. </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>In the Dark </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Before the tall Moon came. </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Little short Dusk </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Was singing a song. </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>In the dark </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Before the tall Moon came </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>A lady named Day </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Fainted away </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>In the Dark </em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular"><em>Before the tall Moon came.</em></span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><a contents="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT84Mkm_Sn8" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT84Mkm_Sn8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT84Mkm_Sn8</a></p>
<p> </p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/64155572020-08-23T16:26:24-04:002020-08-29T13:48:35-04:00Clarence Cameron White<p>Born on this day (Aug 17) in 1879 or 1880, Clarence Cameron White was a violinist and composer quite active in the first half of the 20th century. </p>
<p>The story of how he came to study violin with Will Marion Cook is a colorful one. White’s mother had graduated from Oberlin College, and his grandfather was an abolitionist active in Oberlin, which was the last stop on the Underground Railroad. Clarence lived with his grandparents following the death of his father at a young age. When he was 6, his mother persuaded his grandfather to give young Clarence his violin, as she was convinced of her son’s musical ear. Her father agreed, with the caveat that if he ever played music in a dance band, he would take it back. By the time he was 11, White had moved to Washington with his mother and her new husband, and it was here that he learned of Will Marion Cook, Dvorak’s former student and a violinist himself. White writes “Washington wrought many changes in my young life. One evening my mother took me to hear the pupils of Mrs. Alice Strange Davis, the most renowned piano teacher in Washington at that time among colored people. I was especially anxious to hear Will Marion Cook play the violin....by the time for Cook's number I had fallen asleep... I was awakened by a tremendous applause after his solo. When I was told that he had played I burst out crying and made such a fuss that my mother had to hustle me out of the concert and I went home in disgrace. This rather unusual carrying on at the concert prompted Cook to inquire who the little boy was, and when he discovered the cause of my great disappointment, he came to see my parents and offered to give me violin lessons during the coming summer vacation period. Every lesson was one of pure joy, and it was during this period that I definitely made up my mind to be a violinist.” </p>
<p>White went on to attend Howard University then Oberlin, and one summer a lucky circumstance led him to the White House to play for President McKinley. This furthered his reputation and earned him enough paying concerts to help pay for his tuition at Oberlin; although in his fourth year he had to play at a dance band, despite his promise to his grandfather. Of that he said: “In order to ease my conscience, despite my boss’ protest, I refused to play first violin.” </p>
<p>He did not get a degree from Oberlin because he left for a position as a violin teacher in a school in Pittsburgh. When after a month at this job, the school stopped paying the faculty, he decided to continue his training on the violin. He did one year at the Hartford School of Music (later the Hartford Conservatory, a separate institution from the Hartt School) before finally settling in Boston for the next few years. In 1903 he was appointed head of the string department at the new Washington Conservatory in D.C., a position he held for four years. When White was at Oberlin as a student, he had struck up a correspondence with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and in 1908, after his time at the Conservatory, he moved to London to study composition with Coleridge-Taylor for a few years. He was devastated by his mentor’s early death, and eulogized him: </p>
<p>“Coleridge-Taylor will live as long as there is a boy or girl with Negro blood in his or her veins who has the “spirit of song” in his or her heart, and his life and achievement will be beacon of light to all who have the ambition to go on and accomplish great things in the art of which he was such a glorious star.” </p>
<p>White’s musical style initially was neo-romantic, but he began to incorporate African spirituals in his work, writing several operas, one of which titled “Ouanga” was based on Haitian music and the story of a slave who led a revolution and became emperor of Haiti. He composed a string quartet, several orchestral works, a ballet score, a cantata, works for solo cello, a few violin concertos, and many works for violin and piano. The work featured here is my arrangement for string quartet of "on the Bayou," from his Op. 18 “From the Cotton Fields” for violin and piano. #blackcomposers #songsofcomfort</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/p8YbaUx-REU" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/p8YbaUx-REU">https://youtu.be/p8YbaUx-REU</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/64003572020-08-02T21:48:22-04:002023-11-19T04:58:47-05:00Joseph Bologne/Chevalier de Saint-Georges <p>Joseph Bologne, aka the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745 – 1799) was a champion fencer, classical composer, virtuoso violinist, and conductor of the leading symphony orchestra in Paris. Born in the French colony of Guadeloupe, he was the son of George Bologne de Saint-Georges, a wealthy married planter, and Anne “called” Nanon, his wife's Sengalese slave. Bologne was legally married to Elisabeth Mérican but acknowledged his son by Nanon and gave him his surname. </p>
<p>His father took him to France when he was young, and he was educated there, also becoming a skilled fencer. Some sources say his father could have been his first violin teacher. At the age of 13, young Joseph was enrolled in the Royal Polytechnic Academy of Weapons and Riding. His teacher was Nicolas Texier de la Boëssière, a master swordsman and a huge figure in the development of modern fencing. </p>
<p>In a year, Bologne began to compete against the best swordsmen of Europe. The most famous contest was against fencing master Alexandre Picard, who had publicly called him "La Boëssière’s mulatto." Even in the 18th century that was a heavily loaded term. With pro-slavery and abolitionist spectators looking on and wagering, Bologne won the match. </p>
<p>He also excelled at boxing, shooting, running and ice skating, making him the epitome of an 18th century accomplished gentleman. Legends abounded: he could swim across the Seine with an arm tied behind his back, he was the best marksman in all of Europe, and so on. John Adams, serving then as ambassador to France, wrote in his diary about Bologne: “He will hit the Button, any Button on the Coat or Waistcoat of the greatest Masters. He will hit a Crown Piece in the Air with a Pistoll [sic] Ball.” </p>
<p>Although Saint-George was ineligible, under French law, for any titles of nobility due to his African mother, due to his skill with the sword he was able to claim the “Office of Cavalier, Adviser to the King, Controller Ordinary of Wars” so then became known as “Chevalier de Saint-Georges.” </p>
<p>His musical skill was good enough to have leading composers of the day dedicate works to him: In 1764, 2 violin concertos by Antonio Lolli; in 1766, a set of six string trios by Gossec, and in 1770 we also find a concerto by Stamitz written for him. In 1769, the Parisian public was amazed to see Saint-Georges, the great fencer, playing as concertmaster in Gossec's new orchestra, Le Concert des Amateurs. In 1772 Saint-Georges created a sensation with his debut as a soloist, playing his first two violin concertos, Op. II, with Gossec conducting the orchestra. </p>
<p>Saint-Georges' first compositions, Op. 1, were a set of six string quartets, among the first in France. They were inspired by Haydn's earliest quartets. Saint-Georges wrote two more sets of six string quartets, three forte-piano and violin sonatas, a sonata for harp and flute, and six violin duos. He also wrote 14 violin concertos, two symphonies, six opéras comiques, a number of songs, and eight symphonie-concertantes, which at the time was a new, intrinsically Parisian genre. The music for three other known compositions were lost: a cello sonata, a concerto for clarinet, and one for bassoon. </p>
<p>Most of the instrumental works were composed over a short span of time, and they were published between 1771 and 1779. Around that time, he was serving in the court of Marie Antoinette as one of her music teachers (she was an accomplished spinet and harp player), and according to several accounts was “close” to her. French musical life revolved around the court, and Saint-Georges as both an accomplished musician and swordsman enjoyed the privileges of his status. </p>
<p>In 1778, Mozart went to Paris. As a young prodigy, he had previously met Marie Antoinette at the Hapsburg court of Maria Theresa, mother of the future Queen of France. Now, in hopes of establishing a career in France, he travelled with his mother to Paris. He met back up with the Baron von Grimm, who had been impressed by the young prodigy during his first visit to France back in 1763. The Baron had also used his influence to secure living quarters for the Chevalier Saint-Georges in the mansion next to his. When Mozart’s mother contracted typhoid and tragically passed away, Wolfgang temporarily moved in with the Baron, and was now neighbors with the Chevalier, sharing a common garden, a chapel, and a theater. </p>
<p>By all accounts, the Austrian composer hated France. He did not speak the language, could not understand why the Parisians were not raving about him, especially since he considered their level and taste in music making to be far inferior. He was unable to find any gainful employment, he was not paid for the music he did manage to write for them, and yet here was his neighbor, a black man eleven years his senior, who had the ear of the Queen, a stable position, and a good orchestra at his disposal. </p>
<p>There is an article that ascribes the villainous character of Monostatos in Mozart’s The Magic Flute— to his jealousy of Saint-Georges. This character is the lustful sidekick of an evil Queen. By the time of its premiere in 1791 the French Revolution was brewing; Marie Antoinette and her family were under house arrest. Years earlier Saint-Georges had been forced to leave his court positions, but had continued writing fairly successful operas and had even been dispatched to London on a complicated diplomatic mission. Mozart had returned to Austria and discovered his voice and success with opera. The libretto is attributed to many sources; is it possible that Mozart would have held on to his resentment for so long? We may never know the motives behind making the evil Monosantos a “blackamoor;” perhaps it was just the Austrian racism of that time asserting itself. Or perhaps Mozart fixated on a person who he so easily could have admired but instead associated with a terrible period in his life. </p>
<p>Saint-Georges went on to write a few more successful operas and continue serving the monarchy in various military and political ways. During the French Revolution, Saint-Georges served as a colonel of the Légion St.-Georges, the first all-black regiment in Europe. However, his command was fraught with difficulties, and fell victim to much political intrigue. While he fought with valor at every report, he grew tired of sending his men to slaughter. He eventually chose the Revolution over the doomed Queen and the society that had previously supported him. By the end of the Revolution, he had been imprisoned several times, and almost executed. He tried to regain his rank and regiment, but eventually was dismissed from the army and ordered to leave. For two years he was briefly engaged in a slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue, led by the former founder of the Legion- St. Georges. Barely escaping with his life, the Chevalier found himself living in shattered health in Paris, where he tried to re-establish an orchestra. “Towards the end of my life, I was particularly devoted to my violin,” he said. “Never before did I play it so well.” He died aged 53. </p>
<p>#blackcomposers #nottheblackMozart </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/HkNDTF_Es0k" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/HkNDTF_Es0k">https://youtu.be/HkNDTF_Es0k</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63932302020-07-25T17:10:12-04:002023-12-28T06:16:40-05:00Mary Watkins<p>Mary Watkins (1939-), American composer and pianist, has written for orchestra, opera, chamber ensembles, jazz ensembles, film, theatre, dance, and choral groups. She was trained classically at Howard University and has received several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as recipient of several commissions from Meet the Composer Commissioning Program. </p>
<p>It is the upcoming premiere of her new opera about Emmett Till that caught my attention, since Emmett Till was born on this day in 1941. My friend @Wayne Smith had posted a birthday tribute for him that took place today, and I began remembering this tragic story. In 1955, when he was 14 years old, Emmett was visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta when he violated the strict code of conduct for an African-American male in the Jim Crow-era South by interacting with a white woman in a grocery store. Several days later, he was kidnapped and murdered by the woman’s husband and brother-in-law. Although the killing received publicity across the country with most people calling for justice, an all-white jury acquitted the men. His murder sparked outrage and activism across the country and was seen as a catalyst for the next phase of the civil rights movement, starting with the Montgomery bus boycott in December of 1955. Rosa Parks said she was thinking of Emmett Till when she refused to move to the back of the Montgomery, Alabama bus. </p>
<p>Bob Dylan wrote songs about Emmett Till (“The Death of Emmett Till”); Langston Hughes and composer Jobe Huntley collaborated on an early song about the murder and the trial which now is lost. Mary Watkins’ opera, “Emmett Till, the opera” was scheduled for a premiere first in October 2020 and is now postponed to 2021. It will take place at John Jay College, with the Opera Noire of New York, and Harlem Chamber Players. Robert Mack, general director of Opera Noire will cast the production; Liz Player, founder and director of Harlem Chamber Players, will provide the orchestra. Tania Leon will conduct; Damien Sneed will serve as Choral Master. </p>
<p>Speaking about her process, Mary Watkins says “I lived in a white neighborhood where some of my neighbors were blatant racists. As a child I heard derogatory remarks and jokes about “colored people/Negroes” and had no peers in a community where many people did not see or respect me or my people. Fortunately, much of my ability to cope came through my artistic pursuits. I was able to be alone, and to find ways to deal with the anxiety of being “the only one.” I dealt with that pain through drawing, story-telling and music. Setting music to the Libretto of Emmett Till has been an exciting challenge for me. I remember when Emmett Till was murdered, and the horror and sadness that affected me so deeply. I never expected that I would write an opera about Emmett Till’s lynching, but I am deeply grateful that I have been given this opportunity to examine one of the great tragedies of the 20th century . I am an eclectic composer, and this opera has given me the space to exercise a wide range of musical expression to establish empathy for the characters and the complex emotional texture of the period.” </p>
<p>The aria below is sung by Emmett’s mother Mamie, regretting her decision to let her son go on the trip. #blackcomposers #emmetttill #operanoire #harlemchamberplayers</p>
<p><a contents="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kfwNzQyrDA" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kfwNzQyrDA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kfwNzQyrDA</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63874882020-07-19T18:33:05-04:002023-12-10T12:06:44-05:00Michael Mosoeu Moerane<p>Something to read, and something to listen to. </p>
<p>Michael Mosoeu Moerane (1904-1980) was born in Mangoloaneng, a village in the district of the Eastern Cape of South Africa. His father, descended from a long line of Basotho chiefs, was an emissary for the Basotho royal family and an evangelist for the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society. </p>
<p>For his higher education, Moerane attended the South African Native College. At the time, SANC was the only place in southern Africa where Africans could obtain a Senior Certificate or a University Matriculation Certificate, which was their access to a professional job. Another SANC alum was Nelson Mandela. </p>
<p>After reviving his certificate, Moerane got a job at a high school, met his wife and started a family. In 1931, he started part-time study via correspondence at Rhodes University College, a satellite campus of the University of South Africa, which was the only university offering distance learning and therefore accessible to a black student. He completed the B.Mus. degree in 1941, studying with Austrian composer Friedrich Hartmann. </p>
<p>Moerane had begun composing short a cappella choral works during the late 1920s or early 1930s, and two of these were published in 1938: "Liphala" and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (an arrangement of the American song)." In 1936, in an homage to Schumann, he wrote a set of piano pieces called Album for the Young. The piece to listen to today is one he wrote as a student for his final exam in composition in 1941, a 10-minute orchestral symphonic poem based on Sotho themes called Fatše la Heso (My Country). According to the composer, “it is built mainly around three traditional African themes - a war song, a work song and a lullaby” and it was accompanied by what he called “a more or less adequate analysis”. </p>
<p>Only approximately 10-15 pieces were known during his lifetime. In 2014, another 35 were discovered, including seven more arrangements of spirituals. There are still at least 20 missing works, including choral works and several short pieces for his ensemble, the 'African Springtime Orchestra'. This orchestra came about when he received a donation of a small collection of orchestral instruments. The bulk of its members were his family, who played strings, flute, clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. </p>
<p>Moerane’s political activism eventually got him in trouble with the the National Party, forcing him into early retirement. His son Thuso was a political activist as well. Moerane taught a number of Queenstown's jazz musicians. Although he always thought of himself as a “classical” musician and disapproved of the “immorality and liquor associated with jazz,” his children were influenced by their jazz musician neighbours. His eldest son Mofelehetsi joined a jazz group as a vocalist, and was subsequently banished to another city to continue his education. After his forced retirement, Moerane helped to establish the new music department at Lesotho Teachers Training College. He has been increasingly regarded as a key figure in South African composition since his death. #blackcomposers #AfricanComposers</p>
<p><a contents="https://open.spotify.com/track/4bmAWXsykPxkYJVuW5dhIY?si=cFB4y6woQha3nBbvN9yBjA" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4bmAWXsykPxkYJVuW5dhIY?si=cFB4y6woQha3nBbvN9yBjA">https://open.spotify.com/track/4bmAWXsykPxkYJVuW5dhIY?si=cFB4y6woQha3nBbvN9yBjA</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63856552020-07-15T17:12:03-04:002022-05-28T06:05:28-04:00Anthony Kelley<p>As I’m exploring music in this series #blackcomposers, I am experiencing a weird sense of loss when I realize a composer whose works I admire had lived or worked in the same city as I had at some point in my life, and I never got to know them. Today’s composer is quite active, and through the power of FB I hope to get to know him! (ahem..commission..ahem) What fantastic chamber music is this!?! He doesn’t seem to have a website, so I excerpted info from his bio on the Duke University website. I hope to get to know more about him. </p>
<p>Anthony Kelley joined the Duke University music faculty in 2000 after serving as Composer-in-Residence with the Richmond Symphony for three years under a grant from Meet the Composer, Inc. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Duke University, and he earned a Ph.D. in Musical Composition from the University of California at Berkeley. </p>
<p>His works have been performed by the Richmond Symphony, The American Composers Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, and others. He has received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters, and composition fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. His recent work, such as his soundtracks to the H. Lee Waters/Tom Whiteside film "Conjuring Bearden" [2006] and Dante James's film, The Doll [2007], explores music as linked with other media, arts, and sociological phenomena. He co-directs and performs in the improvisational Postmodern blues quartet called the BLAK Ensemble.</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/r69FH11bgrg" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/r69FH11bgrg">https://youtu.be/r69FH11bgrg</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63845252020-07-13T12:27:14-04:002022-03-21T16:13:06-04:00Edward Bland<p>Listening to the music of Ed Bland (1926-2013) transports me my youth growing up in New York City in the 70s. His use of texture in instruments and rhythms to build tension and energy is probably the greatest factor, but his work in television and film of the time also speaks to what audiences in the 60s and 70s were hearing all throughout the media. </p>
<p>Bland began his musical career as a jazz clarinet and sax player in Chicago before turning to composition after hearing a recording of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. He had conflicting feelings both about Western art music and jazz: To Bland, Western art music was dead music, to be used only for gaining technical command of one’s instrument; on the other hand, while he felt like he could improvise more daring and interesting solos in jazz, he also felt limited by the predictability of jazz’s cadential structure. Initially he felt that wanted to uncover the “secret of why Stravinsky’s music swung” and integrating it into his knowledge of jazz. He attended first the University of Chicago then the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Wrestling with the problems of how to incorporate what he called the “Eternal Now” into his music, he journeyed through West African drumming, serialism, musique concrete, the music of Stockhausen, Cowell, Beethoven, John Cage, Bo Diddley, the writings of John Dewey, and his pop contemporaries Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Pete Seeger and others. Although he had adopted an atonal, 12-tone approach early on, when shooting scenes for the semi-documentary “The Cry of Jazz” (this landmark film was released in 1959, and said by some to be the first film made by black Americans that challenged the humanity of white Americans, as well as the first hip-hop film), he was struck by the power and immediacy of gospel music. He moved to New York City in 1960 and began to incorporate the syntax of Funk and gospel music into his work as composer, arranger and composer/orchestrator for film and TV. He did projects with Jimi Hendrix and George Benson, and later with Lionel Hampton, Al Hirt, and Dizzy Gillespie, and was hired by Vanguard records as an executive producer. In the mid-80s he moved to L.A., still doing television and film work while composing western art music. </p>
<p>Bland felt that by bringing all the traditions of the past into the present and then the future, he had finally started to celebrate the “Eternal Now.” In his words: “The curse of pop music and jazz is that they are too predictable. Ideally, Art music should demand unpredictability...In my 31 “Urban Counterpoint” piano works, the musical language I’ve used is in the vernacular – the language of pop music and jazz. Unpredictability is introduced into this vernacular setting through a rampaging polyphonic/polymetric texture....Interestingly enough, the singer Beyonce leased my work “Skunk Juice” for sampling on her single, “Creole” and Atari Video Games leased “A Gritty Nitty” for their game TEST DRIVE UNLIMITED. Considering that these two pieces were written between 1966-’71 I would say that my Urban Classical Funk style has come full circle.” </p>
<p>Bland’s 1979 “Piece for Chamber Orchestra” is the work featured here today. At the time it was praised by “classical” composers and presenters, and almost 20 years later a 26-year-old hip hopper from South Central LA called it “Rap Without Words.” </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/SLdIC9iUi48" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/SLdIC9iUi48">https://youtu.be/SLdIC9iUi48</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63833342020-07-11T20:17:56-04:002022-05-10T03:09:28-04:00Francis Johnson<p>There is a question about the birthplace of Francis Johnson (1792-1844), a performer of the bugle and violin. Some sources cite Martinique, while some say Philadelphia. Regardless, by his early 20s he was building a reputation as a bandleader in Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania. </p>
<p>During the course of his career, Johnson composed over 200 musical arrangements in various styles including cotillions, operatic airs, ballads, quadrilles, patriotic marches, quicksteps, and other forms of ballroom music. These pieces were published, making him the first African American to publish sheet music as well as the first African American bandleader to conduct public concerts as well as integrated musical events, when he started to incorporate white musicians into his previously all-black band. In 1837 he led the first American ensemble to perform before Queen Victoria in England. She was so taken with Johnson’s musical talent that she gave him a silver bugle as a present. In Europe, Johnson and his band picked up the latest musical trends and brought them back to the United States. It was Johnson that introduced waltzes by Johann Strauss and a style of music which developed into what is now known as the very popular classical “pops” style. Despite all this success, life as an African American was not easy in the first half of the 1800s and Johnson and his band often faced racism at their performances. On several occasions, the audience did not believe that Johnson and his fellow black musicians could read the sheet music in front of them, insisting that they were playing the music “by ear.” In St. Louis, Missouri, the city government put out an affidavit for his arrest and eventually kicked him out of town. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was chased by an angry, violent crowd, escaping with only minor injuries. </p>
<p>There are no direct accounts of how Johnson reacted to the virulent racism he faced during his lifetime. What remains as evidence of Johnson’s commitment to equality are his compositions like “The Grave of the Slave” and the “Recognition March on the Independence of Haiti” as well as his continued commitment to play for the black community even after he became hugely popular in the more lucrative white community. Francis Johnson died in 1844 in Philadelphia after a lengthy illness at the age of 52. </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/YezzqlOkiL0" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/YezzqlOkiL0">https://youtu.be/YezzqlOkiL0</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63832262020-07-11T17:44:25-04:002022-05-26T01:38:28-04:00Adolphus Hailstork<p>(condensed from the composer's biography page )</p>
<p>Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork (1941-) born in Rochester, New York, began his musical studies with piano lessons He studied at Howard University and Manhattan School of Music. After returning from service in the U.S. Armed Forces in Germany he got a doctorate degree at Michigan State University in Lansing His principal teachers were H. Owen Reed, Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, Mark Fax, and Nadia Boulanger. He has taught at Youngstown State University, Norfolk State University and Old Dominion University where he is Eminent Scholar and Professor of Music. Hailstork writes in a variety of forms and styles: symphonic works and tone poems for orchestra; a piano concerto; numerous chamber works; duos for such combinations as horn and piano, clarinet and piano, flute and piano, and others; a large number of songs including songs for soprano, baritone, mezzo-soprano, some with piano and others with orchestra or chamber group; band works and band transcriptions, and many pieces for piano.</p>
<p>Significant performances by major orchestras (Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York) have been conducted by leading conductors such as James de Priest, Daniel Barenboim, Kurt Masur, and Lorin Maazel. The composer's second symphony (commissioned by the Detroit Symphony, and second opera , JOSHUA'S BOOTS (commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Kansas City Lyric Opera) were both premiered in 1999. Hailstork's second and third symphonies have been recorded by the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra (David Lockington) and were released on the Naxos label in January 2007. Recent commissions include EARTHRISE, a new large scale choral work premiered by James Conlon at the 2006 Cincinnati May Festival, THREE STUDIES ON CHANT MELODIES for the American Guild of Organists 2006 national convention, and, WHITMAN'S JOURNEY, a cantata for chorus and orchestra which was premiered by the Master Chorale of Washington, D.C. (under Donald McCullough) at Kennedy Center in April 2006. RISE FOR FREEDOM, an opera about the Underground Railroad, was premiered in October of 2007 by the Cincinnati Opera Company.</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/QlikBtVjBc4" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/QlikBtVjBc4">https://youtu.be/QlikBtVjBc4</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63832242020-07-11T17:36:23-04:002024-01-10T07:39:10-05:00Errollyn Wallen<p>Errollyn Wallen (1958-) is a Belize-born British composer. She was the first black woman to have a work performed at The Proms ("Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra"). Her output includes eighteen operas, oratorios, concerti, chamber works, large orchestral works, songs and two large scale works for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games for London 2012 broadcast to a billion people around the world. She has performed and written tributes for and to Nelson Mandela. </p>
<p>In 2015 she became an Honorary Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford and in 2019 an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths, London. She has received an Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music, a British Composer Award and a FIPA D’Or for Best Music for a Television Series. She has an Honorary Doctorate from York St. John’s University, is one of BBC’s 100 Women 2018 and one of London University’s 150 Leading Women; her orchestral album with Orchestra X, Photography, was voted into the Top Ten Classical Albums by NPR. </p>
<p>I was lucky enough to get to accompany her to the NASA launch (STS-115) where she was set to probably be the first black woman composer whose music got launched into space. Her songs and music are brilliant and hilarious and meaningful, and I am so lucky to have been able to commission things from her, but more importantly, to be her friend. The magnitude of her service to music cannot be understated, and I know I can write this and she will laugh it off, because for her it is just about expressing what is in her heart. </p>
<p>My feet may take a little while </p>
<p>To walk the way of my dreaming heart; </p>
<p>The more I walk, the more I breathe, </p>
<p>The more I breathe, the less I know. </p>
<p>There is a song that I was taught, </p>
<p>Of hills and streams and all </p>
<p>The hopes and fears of living things </p>
<p>Are written there in me. </p>
<p>My feet are slower than my heart, </p>
<p>Slower than my dreams, than my will </p>
<p>I’ll walk a million miles, </p>
<p>I’ve walked a million miles of innocence.</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/iz1gEWM80Qo" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/iz1gEWM80Qo">https://youtu.be/iz1gEWM80Qo</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63832232020-07-11T17:32:32-04:002020-07-11T17:32:32-04:00Samuel Coleridge Taylor<p>In the foreword to the 1969 edition of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Musician, His Life and Letters, Blydon Jackson writes: </p>
<p>“American Negroes who were born in the earlier years of this century grew up in black communities where the name of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was as well known then as now are such names as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.... Gentle as he was in manner, refined as was his calling, he was still a fierce apostle of human liberty and a crusader for the rights of man. He was a parable for the black consciousness of our present time.” </p>
<p>Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was born a suburb of London. His father was a native of Sierra Leone, and his mother was English. As a child Coleridge-Taylor studied violin and sang in the choir of St. George's Church, Croydon. At the age of fifteen he was admitted by Sir George Grove to the Royal College of Music as a violin student. While at the Royal College his interest in composition grew. He ended up studying composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. </p>
<p>Some of Coleridge-Taylor's greatest works date from these early years. His most famous work is Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, which was based upon the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. During Coleridge-Taylor's lifetime it had a popularity in England equaled only by Handel's Messiah. </p>
<p>In the United States, his work inspired the establishment of the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society, which sponsored his first visit to the United States. An introduction to Coleridge-Taylor's Twenty-four Negro Melodies was written by Booker T. Washington. Coleridge-Taylor was received at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt, an extraordinary event for a person of color at that time. </p>
<p>Coleridge-Taylor sought to draw from traditional African music and integrate it into the classical tradition, which he considered Johannes Brahms to have done with Hungarian music and Antonín Dvořák with Bohemian music. He wrote for orchestra, chorus, chamber music, instrumental solos and concerti; the parts for his violin concerto (written for Maud Powell) were lost on the transatlantic voyage and had to be re-written. He also wrote an opera, lost for years and said to have been destroyed, but recently unearthed in the British Library. He died of pneumonia at the young age of 37. </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/2Tx7l96oRcE" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/2Tx7l96oRcE">https://youtu.be/2Tx7l96oRcE</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63832072020-07-11T17:13:51-04:002020-07-11T17:13:51-04:00William Grant Still<p>So much has been written about the life of William Grant Still (1895-1974) that I can't do it justice. “I am waiting patiently,” he said in his autobiography, “for that man who wrote the book about how most Negro Spirituals were borrowed from White sources to come along and prove that Bach or Beethoven actually did originate them. Why not? They say that someone even proved, more than a score of years ago, that ‘ragtime’ came from Mozart’s ‘tempo rubato.’ If one has the time and the patience and a big enough ax to grind, he can prove anything.” </p>
<p>(I saw on a viola forum that Still had written a viola sonata- but I can’t find it- anyone have any ideas if it exists?)</p>
<p>Instead, read this L.A. Times interview about #williamgrantstill with Thomas Wilkins. </p>
<p><strong>What do you find most profound in Still’s work, and what influence did the blues have on some of his compositions? </strong></p>
<p>He certainly knows how to write in other styles, but he is true to his own heritage in both the “Afro-American Symphony” and the Fourth Symphony. It took me 20 years to get to that point. At first, I thought this was just folksy music, [but] the more I defend American music, the more I’m convinced that that’s OK. Certainly other composers used folk music. Dvorak. Mahler. They understood this was music that would have the largest appeal to common people. The blues and the Harlem Renaissance brought Still back to his roots. There was a certain degree of acceptance of jazz among the [musical elite]. But the blues just felt too secular, too raw, too on the nose. The blues made a lot of people uncomfortable. You were too personal with blues. I think Still’s point was, Well, so what, it is what it is and I’m not going to apologize for it. </p>
<p><strong>What in particular strikes you about his “Afro-American Symphony”? </strong></p>
<p>I think that’s his strongest piece. It’s the reality of the sorrow, the reality of the longing. The symphony opens with that solo plaintive English horn sound. It’s the perfect instrument to start this piece, and, then, in the last movement, there’s this aspirational, lovely song that the entire orchestra plays, and, then, he puts it in the voice of a cello, which, in my mind, is the closest instrument in that orchestra that sounds like a human voice. And then, all of a sudden, he flips the switch, and there’s a driving energy that takes us to the end of that piece as if to say this can be the possibility if you aspire to it. </p>
<p><strong>Some African American composers and conductors feel they are invisible in the classical music world. What are the prospects for black composers and conductors today? </strong></p>
<p>I think African American composers have more opportunity now than perhaps they’ve had in the last 30 years. They are certainly less invisible. Part of that is because of the generational shift in people making decisions, especially in the arts. We are less afraid to not solely exist in that Western European tradition. We are braver about embracing things. There’s a great canon we have that comes from that [European] tradition, but it is not correct to pursue that canon at the expense of the other. I think everybody now is braver about pursing the other as long as we don’t abandon the great canon. And that creates more possibilities for African Americans, women, Asian composers. We’re more open to a broader palette. I think we are coming to realize more keenly now, because of what’s happening the world, that we need art to speak to our common humanity more than ever. </p>
<p><strong>Coming up in the classical world as an African American, what kind of prejudice and discrimination did you encounter and how did you handle it? </strong></p>
<p>I can’t control what is in the heart of other people. I can only be responsible for when an opportunity presents itself to do the very best that I can. I’m sure that I have not gotten opportunities because of the color of my skin or not been hired as a music director or conductor. There’s no way for me to prove that, and I can’t spend a lot of time wallowing in that. I do have a certain degree of success. I have four jobs [he laughs], and possibly that allows me to be a little more cavalier about it. But I’m also a realist. It’s incumbent on people like me who have a degree of success to do a good job so that people don’t look at those who are coming after me — and who look like me — with a degree of suspicion in regard to intellect or ability. </p>
<p><strong>Still knew the classical canon, but he also seemed to want to expand it. He knew there were other places to go. How does his work and the work of other African American or minority composers fit into this? </strong></p>
<p>Don’t validate that music only in February during Black History Month. We say this about American music, period. Let’s not have 99.9% of your concerts be out of the Western European tradition and, then, one week call it an All-American program. Why not incorporate this into the regular offerings throughout the season, so it looks like you’ve taken ownership of the repertoire, not just made this mantlepiece every once in a while? Don’t have Negro night at the symphony or Mexican night at the symphony. Just add this repertoire to the canon.</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/9O2q5ZPdlFM" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/9O2q5ZPdlFM">https://youtu.be/9O2q5ZPdlFM</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63832012020-07-11T16:58:44-04:002020-07-11T16:58:44-04:00Eleanor Alberga<p>In 2017 when Janet Arms and I were running the 20/20 chamber ensemble at the Hartt School, I contacted Eleanor Alberga (1949- ) to see if we could do the U.S. premiere of her work “Animal Banter” for flute, guitar, and bass. She is a delightful composer of Jamaican heritage who also consented to stream an interview during the stage change of the concert, and I was thrilled to learn more about her. Her string quartets are really fantastic-here is an excerpt of one of them, and an interview with her (not ours) from crosseyedpianist.com. #blackcomposers </p>
<p><em>Who or what inspired you to take up composing, and pursue a career in music? </em></p>
<p>At the age of 5, having heard classical music on the radio and piano lessons at my mother’s school, I asked my parents if I could have piano lessons. After piano lessons started I decided I wanted to be a concert pianist and a few years later I began writing pieces for myself. </p>
<p><em>Who or what were the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer? </em></p>
<p>Contemporary dance. People, songs, dance and the landscapes of my native Jamaica. The music of Bela Bartok. Later also the music of J S Bach, Birtwistle, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Schoenberg, Robert Cohan. </p>
<p><em>What have been the greatest challenges/frustrations of your career so far? </em></p>
<p>Two things: issues of race and gender in as much as they have defined me in the minds of others. </p>
<p>Not having had what is considered a thorough and proper university education as a composer. </p>
<p><em>What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece? </em></p>
<p>Deadlines; they are as energising as they are terrifying. </p>
<p><em>What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles and orchestras? </em></p>
<p>Finding out and knowing about the special strengths of particular soloists or groups. I found that working with, for instance, Mary Plazas whilst writing my opera was a big influence in how that role was shaped. Ditto writing my first violin concerto for my violinist husband, Thomas Bowes. </p>
<p><em>Of which works are you most proud? </em></p>
<p>‘Snow White’ as it was my first piece for that size of orchestra. Far from being intimidated I felt instantly at home. </p>
<p>My three String Quartets I can now look back on with great pride. I managed three quite substantial pieces I feel, and that they are all very different from each other pleases me especially now that they have been recorded. </p>
<p>The Opera ‘Letters of a Love Betrayed’ because it so clearly moved people when they saw and heard it. </p>
<p>I was also proud of ‘Arise, Athena!’ which I wrote for the last night of the BBC Proms. </p>
<p><em>How would you characterise your compositional language? </em></p>
<p>I have a language which ranges from things clearly derived from my Jamaican childhood and heritage through to the sort of sounds people more often associate with modernism. There always seems to be a sliding scale of the proportions of these two extremities. This has been a problem for some people – even me – at times. But I’m now quite relaxed about this. I write to be me. </p>
<p><em>Who are your favourite musicians/composers? </em></p>
<p>There are those I’ve admired from afar; composers Schoenberg, Berg, Bartok, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Messiaen, JS Bach; pianists Martha Agerich, Sviatoslav Richter, conductors Kleiber and Furtwangler amongst others. </p>
<p>And then those who I’ve actually had the pleasure of hearing or getting to know or working with – Jeremy Huw Williams, Mary Plazas, Thomas Bowes, Joseph Swensen, Joanna MacGregor, Peter Ash, Harrison Birtwistle to name a few. </p>
<p><em>As a musician, what is your definition of success?</em> </p>
<p>Sensing an audience has been moved or thrilled or for whom one senses time has stood still during a performance. All three at once is good. </p>
<p><em>What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians? </em></p>
<p>Be serious about what you are doing. Be persistent, dedicated, disciplined and passionate. Be yourself – that’s the tricky bit. </p>
<p><em>With her 2015 Last Night of the Proms opener ARISE ATHENA! Eleanor Alberga cemented a reputation as a composer of international stature. Performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Chorus and conducted by Marin Alsop, the work was heard and seen by millions. </em></p>
<p><em>Her music is not easy to pigeon-hole. The musical language of her opera LETTERS OF A LOVE BETRAYED (2009), premiered at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury stage, has drawn comparisons with Berg’s Wozzeck and Debussy’s Pelleas, while her lighter works draw more obviously on her Jamaican heritage and time as a singer with the Jamaican Folk Singers and as a member of an African Dance company. But the emotional range of her language, her structural clarity and a fabulously assured technique as an orchestrator have always drawn high praise. </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/3KO17mYd4ug" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/3KO17mYd4ug">https://youtu.be/3KO17mYd4ug</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831992020-07-11T16:53:27-04:002020-07-11T16:53:27-04:00Zenobia Powell Perry<p>Zenobia Powell Perry (1908-2004) was born in what was once a predominantly African American town of Boley, Oklahoma to a physician, Dr. Calvin B. Powell and Birdie Thompson Powell (who had some Creek Indian heritage). Her family was well-educated and middle-class. Her grandfather, who had been a slave, sang her traditional spirituals as a child, which later influenced her work. </p>
<p>As a child, Perry met Booker T. Washington and sang for him. In her youth Perry took piano and violin lessons. </p>
<p>Although her father was not supportive of her decision to study music, she went to Omaha, Nebraska to study at the Cecil Berryman Conservatory in 1929. After her return to Boley, Nathaniel Dett visited her family to ask them to send her to the Hampton Institute, where she could study with him. However, soon after, Dett left Hampton for the Eastman School of Music and Perry decided on her own to study privately with Dett in Rochester, New York. </p>
<p>In 1935, she went on to study the Tuskegee Institute, and studied with William L. Dawson who encouraged her to compose original work. After Tuskegee, Perry became part of a black teacher training program which was headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, who became a mentor and friend to Perry . She began "earnestly" writing her own music during the 1950s. From 1952 to 1954, Perry worked on her master's degree in music in composition at Wyoming University, where she studied under Allan Arthur Willman, Darius Milhaud and Charles Jones. </p>
<p>Perry worked as a professor for much of her life, teaching at the Colorado State Teachers College, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and Central State University, in Wilberforce, Ohio. Her compositions are classical and "incorporates contrapuntal, tonal, mild dissonance, with some jazz and folk influence. She wrote for orchestra, bands, solo instruments and composed a mass.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/6SyRWuqzq0c" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/6SyRWuqzq0c">https://youtu.be/6SyRWuqzq0c</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831932020-07-11T16:40:54-04:002020-07-11T16:40:54-04:00Ulysses Kay<p>Ulysses Kay (1917-1995), born in in Tucson, Az (and went to my high school), was the nephew of the New Orleans jazz legend and cornet player, Joe "King" Oliver, who influenced him in his formative years. After finishing his undergrad at the University of Arizona, where he was also mentored by William Grant Still, he went to Eastman and Yale, studying composition with Howard Hanson, and Hindemith. He did a stint in the Navy Band during WW2 and then went to Columbia University. In 1958 Kay went to the Soviet Union on a cultural exchange program with the first delegation of American composers. In the 60s he won a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was professor of composition at Lehman College until 1988, and his final opera, “Frederick Douglass” was completed in 1991. He has written many many works in all genres, including film and television.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a contents="https://open.spotify.com/album/1Hszf4aB0RphyHLT9KE33u?highlight=spotify:track:3MadjOaFEEuI0rAvzvZrdS" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://open.spotify.com/album/1Hszf4aB0RphyHLT9KE33u?highlight=spotify:track:3MadjOaFEEuI0rAvzvZrdS">https://open.spotify.com/album/1Hszf4aB0RphyHLT9KE33u?highlight=spotify:track:3MadjOaFEEuI0rAvzvZrdS</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831922020-07-11T16:36:35-04:002022-03-26T02:52:37-04:00Undine Smith Moore<p>Today’s composer is Undine Smith Moore. (1904-1989) You can read the details of her life by googling her, but here is an excerpt of a speech she made at the First National Congress of Women in Music in 1981: </p>
<p>“I was asked to comment on the role and the position of the Black artist. I would speak firstly of position, and this is not related just to Blacks, it’s everybody: </p>
<p>The artist is not highly valued in American society. And from what I read in the newspapers from day to day, now, I don’t think it’s being advanced. Of this group, Blacks are at the bottom. The Black will have less time to write, to create. The Black will find greater difficulty getting his work printed, recorded, performed. The Black will be omitted from so-called serious texts of books and lists of music, will get comparatively little money, which means that while the position may be very slowly improving, in general, the lot is not very different from that of others of his kind in any comparative scale. </p>
<p>I may say that though I have stressed [the Black artist], because I was asked…to talk about Blacks, I think that for certain reasons for a while it will continue to be true of women. With regard to the role of the artist, I had written: </p>
<p>The primary function of any artist in any period is to convey as honestly and as sincerely as he can his personal vision of life. Since the artist belongs to the most sensitive segment of any society, a Black composer in contemporary America, aware of his own plight and that of his people, can scarcely avoid some expression reflecting these conditions. Without positing a social purpose as a requirement of art, he cannot really escape expressing his heritage somewhere in the body of his work. This expression in the hands of the gifted artist can be powerful. </p>
<p>I think of the powerful social change in a work like Picasso’s Guernica. I think of the refusal of Pablo Casals to play, though courted by dictators. And I think of Marian Anderson not marching and joining ordinary protest movements, but, nevertheless, opening up the doors of Constitution Hall. I think of a woman like Natalie Hinderas who by the very perfection of her playing is an agent of social change. And I think that a meeting such as this, and such as the activities which have gone before, these are tremendous forces for social change, and they should be kept in the minds of musicians.” </p>
<p>#blackcomposers </p>
<p><a contents="https://open.spotify.com/track/1tc0cxzjkG6RLId2rB3WMD?si=P1W72C_zR6Wo4dC-j7_aGQ" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1tc0cxzjkG6RLId2rB3WMD?si=P1W72C_zR6Wo4dC-j7_aGQ">https://open.spotify.com/track/1tc0cxzjkG6RLId2rB3WMD?si=P1W72C_zR6Wo4dC-j7_aGQ</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831292020-07-11T16:28:57-04:002023-12-10T13:57:10-05:00Edmond Dédé<p>Edmund Dédé (1827-1901) was born in New Orleans. His parents were free Creoles of color who moved to New Orleans from the French West Indies around 1809. Dede took his first music lessons from his father who was a bandmaster for a local military group. </p>
<p>Dédé soon became a violin prodigy after studying under Italian-born composer and theater-orchestra conductor Ludovico Gabici, as well as Christian Debergue, the conductor of the New Orleans Free Creoles of Color Philharmonic Society. He later studied with Eugene Prevost, French-born winner of 1831 Prix de Rome and conductor of Orchestras at the Theater d’Orleans, and Charles Richard Lambert, who was a free black musician, music teacher, and conductor from New York who had moved to New Orleans. </p>
<p>In 1848, after race relations in New Orleans worsened following the end of the Mexican-American War, he moved to Mexico. Dédé returned to New Orleans in 1851 where he wrote and published “Mon Pauvre Coeur” (My Poor Heart), which is considered the oldest piece of sheet music published by a New Orleans free Creole of color. </p>
<p>He began work as a cigar-maker, which allowed him to earn enough money to move to Europe to further pursue his music education. In 1857, he entered the Paris Conservatory. He then moved to Bordeaux where he became conductor for the L’Alcazar orchestra. Good trade relations between Bordeaux and Louisiana meant a large number of free Creoles of color settled in the French town, and Dédé experienced less racial prejudice in France than in the United States. </p>
<p>During his years in Bordeaux, Dédé was a popular and prolific music composer, writing ballets, operettas, opera-comiques, overtures, and more than 250 dances and songs. The vast majority of the surviving copies of Dédé’s works are from this period of his life, stored at the National Library of France in Paris. Despite his enormous popularity in France, the performance of Dede’s Quasimodo Symphony by a New Orleans orchestra in 1865 was a rare American performance of one of his compositions. </p>
<p>Dédé made one return trip to New Orleans in 1893, when his ship hit bad weather and was forced to dock near Galveston, Texas for two months; his prized Cremona violin was lost in the event. He remained in the United States until 1894 and spent some time travelling to cities around the country to give violin concerts. He returned to Paris in 1894 and died there in 1903. </p>
<p>Warning: ophicleide solo! #notatuba #blackcomposers (the correct spelling of his first name has been disputed, but currently is thought to be “Edmund”)</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a contents="https://open.spotify.com/album/2qNw560jOFlSxTVr48Mfq3?highlight=spotify:track:1k3XR7Et3zLbVKU5PHvFfr" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://open.spotify.com/album/2qNw560jOFlSxTVr48Mfq3?highlight=spotify:track:1k3XR7Et3zLbVKU5PHvFfr">https://open.spotify.com/album/2qNw560jOFlSxTVr48Mfq3?highlight=spotify:track:1k3XR7Et3zLbVKU5PHvFfr</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831282020-07-11T16:24:16-04:002020-07-11T16:24:16-04:00Nathaniel Dett<p>Canadian composer Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) was one of the many black composers that found their way to Oberlin. He was a double major in piano (studying with Howard Handel Carter, who also taught Jessie Covington Dent, another Black prodigy) and theory-composition (studying with Arthur E. Heacox, George Carl Hastings, and the future teacher of William Grant Still, George Whitefield Andrews), He remained at Oberlin for five years, graduating with his B.M. degree in 1908 with honors. It was here he heard Dvořák's "American" quartet and was reminded of the spirituals his grandmother had sung to him in Canada. From this time, he was resolved to participate in the preservation of the spirituals although he had originally looked on them, as did others, as reminders of slavery times. He often spent his summers seeking additional education – at Columbia University, the American Conservatory of Music, Northwestern University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He spent the 1919-1920 school year at Harvard University, a student of Arthur Foote, and the summer of 1929 he was at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau for study with Nadia Boulanger, as so many had before and after him. In 1918, Dett wrote of his compositional goals: “We have this wonderful store of folk music—the melodies of an enslaved people ... But this store will be of no value unless we utilize it, unless we treat it in such manner that it can be presented in choral form, in lyric and operatic works, in concertos and suites and salon music—unless our musical architects take the rough timber of Negro themes and fashion from it music which will prove that we, too, have national feelings and characteristics, as have the European peoples whose forms we have zealously followed for so long.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p><a contents="https://open.spotify.com/album/7AwOqxphy6Fd9TN9eHtRbC?highlight=spotify:track:41lTnb7YxyLTcnWFR8bxwG" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://open.spotify.com/album/7AwOqxphy6Fd9TN9eHtRbC?highlight=spotify:track:41lTnb7YxyLTcnWFR8bxwG">https://open.spotify.com/album/7AwOqxphy6Fd9TN9eHtRbC?highlight=spotify:track:41lTnb7YxyLTcnWFR8bxwG</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831242020-07-11T16:08:46-04:002020-07-11T16:08:46-04:00Margaret Bonds<p>Only 75 of the more than 200 compositions of pianist/composer Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) exist today. Of those 75 scores, only 47 were published during her lifetime. According to musicologist Helen Walker-Hill, in her book “From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music”, Bonds did not maintain organized files and often sent the original copies directly to the individual for whom it was written. Her manuscripts, therefore, are likely scattered all over the country. (In one case, an entire box of her scores was found sitting next to a dumpster at a book fair after failing to find a buyer.) One of Bonds’ largest and perhaps most important works–Montgomery Variations, written in 1965 during the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March and dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has seldom been performed. There is one video of it on YouTube, performed by the University of Connecticut Orchestra, that does not do it justice. </p>
<p>After receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Northwestern University in 1933 and 1934 respectively, Bonds went on to a career writing pieces for the Glenn Miller Orchestra and regularly performing on the radio. Educated as a classical musician, her work was versatile and strongly influenced by jazz and blues. Her compositions were performed by a large number of concert artists including Louis Armstrong and Woody Herman. She is the most well known for her associations and collaborations with Langston Hughes. </p>
<p>Although she was the first black woman to solo with the Chicago Symphony at age 22, she faced racism every day of her life (at the time she was attending Northwestern, black women weren’t allowed in the pool) and she said even more challenging than her experience as a black woman in the Civil Rights Era was the prejudices she faced as a woman in classical music. In a 1964 interview, Bonds said, “Women are expected to be wives, mothers, and do all the nasty things in the community (Oh, I do them). And if a woman is cursed with having talent too, then she keeps apologizing for it. … It really is a curse, in a way, because instead of working 12 hours a day like other women, you work 24.”</p>
<p><a contents="https://open.spotify.com/album/1UlHwKINBhvtbQkqHJfYse?highlight=spotify:track:7eFdL6M5dGr7TTcdM4TWqZ" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://open.spotify.com/album/1UlHwKINBhvtbQkqHJfYse?highlight=spotify:track:7eFdL6M5dGr7TTcdM4TWqZ">https://open.spotify.com/album/1UlHwKINBhvtbQkqHJfYse?highlight=spotify:track:7eFdL6M5dGr7TTcdM4TWqZ</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831232020-07-11T16:06:34-04:002022-02-17T17:14:53-05:00Thomas Bethune<p>Thomas Greene Bethune a.k.a Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins </p>
<p>Thomas Wiggins (1849-1908) was a blind autistic slave born into an enslaved family. Tom's father Domingo Wiggins, a field slave, and his mother Charity Greene were purchased at auction by James Bethune of Columbus, Georgia when Tom was an infant. The Bethune family had seven children who played piano or sang, and their mother had been trained professionally, so when it became clear that Tom at a young age possessed an uncanny ability to imitate any musical composition-or any sound- she took over the musical education of Tom as well. His ability quickly surpassed that of his teachers. Bethune recognized his talent as a potential source of income, and Tom was hired out at the age of nine or ten to a traveling showman named Perry Oliver, who gave Bethune $15,000 to exhibit Tom in southern and other pro-slavery states. By 1860 Tom had started to compose music, and had been invited by President Buchanan to perform at the White House, becoming the first African American musician to perform at the White House- although not as a free man. </p>
<p>When the Civil War broke out, Tom’s engagements were limited to the South where he was used to raise money for the Confederacy. His most famous song, "The Battle of Manassas", a song evoking the sounds of battle interspersed with train sounds and whistles, which Wiggins made himself, is the story of the Confederate Army's 1861 victory at the Battle of Bull Run. As a result, many black newspapers refused to celebrate him, pointing out that he served to reinforce negative stereotypes about African-American individuals and that he was only a source of profit for slaveholders. </p>
<p>Determined to retain control over him even in the case of a Confederate defeat, in 1864 Bethune made Tom’s parents sign a 5 year indenture agreement giving Bethune legal guardianship of Tom. In 1865 there was a challenge to the indenture agreement, and a trial in Georgia, full of racial and political overtones, ended in a judge allowing Bethune to keep Tom in a “neo-chattel” relationship. </p>
<p>When Tom turned 21 and at the end of his indentured contract, Bethune requested that the courts declare Tom legally insane and appoint himself as legal guardian. The courts complied. Tom continued to perform. Throughout his life he would tour Great Britain, Scotland, Europe, Canada, the Rocky Mountain states, the far West, and South America. His repertoire included up to 7,000 pieces: standard classical piano repertoire with approximately 100 of his own compositions. He also added the coronet, French horn, and flute to his list of mastered instruments. Shortly after the Civil War ended, General Bethune relocated the family to a 420 acre estate in Virginia. Tom was provided with a room containing his own Steinway grand piano. For the next twenty years he spent the summers between concert tours on the Virginia estate. During the concert season when he wasn’t on the road, Tom lived in New York City with Bethune’s oldest son John, and continued to receive professional instruction to enlarge his musical repertoire. When John married Eliza Stutzbach, the owner of the boardinghouse in New York where he and Tom were living, Tom’s circumstances changed again. The marriage lasted only a short time before Eliza sued for divorce claiming John had deserted her. Before the divorce could be granted, while hurrying to board a moving train, John Bethune was accidentally caught beneath the wheels of the train and dragged to his death. A few months later, a reading of John's will revealed he had banned Eliza from receiving any inheritance claiming she was a "heartless adventuress who sought to absorb his estate." “Management” of Tom then reverted back to Bethune Sr. In retaliation, Eliza engineered an alliance with Tom's elderly mother Charity to gain custody. The custody case dragged through the courts for several years as Charity pursued legal remedies to have control of Tom's life placed in Eliza's hands. Finally, in 1887, a federal court ordered Bethune to surrender Tom into the hands of Charity and his former daughter-in-law Eliza Bethune. On the date of surrender, the Bethune family who had made a fortune estimated at $750,000 at the hands of “Blind Tom” (making him the highest “paid” musician of the time), gave possession of him over to his mother. One month later, Tom was again on the concert stage and now a source of income for Eliza who promoted him as "the last slave set free by order of the Supreme Court of the United States," Tom's performances continued throughout the United States and Canada. He now performed under his father's surname as Thomas Greene Wiggins. With the exception of his brief reunion with Charity who soon returned to Georgia, nothing else had changed. Tom spent the remainder of his life “in the care of” Eliza. Performances, concerts and vaudeville acts continued until 1904. Tom died at age fifty-nine at Eliza's home in Hoboken. A few days later The New York Times headline read "BLIND TOM, PIANIST, DIES OF A STROKE -- A CHILD ALL HIS LIFE." Newspaper coverage reported that Eliza laid Tom to rest in Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sewing Song (Imitation Of A Sewing Machine) </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/3w7cqRScnNQ" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/3w7cqRScnNQ">https://youtu.be/3w7cqRScnNQ</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831222020-07-11T16:03:19-04:002021-06-09T07:48:38-04:00Ornette Coleman<p>So much has been written about jazz legend Ornette Coleman (1930-2015) that it is much better to read this snippet of an Atlantic article written in 1972, to hear him speaking for himself. </p>
<p>"I started writing before I started playing," he explains. "I didn't start playing until later, because nobody would hire me. But when I went to audition my tunes for Les Koenig [of Contemporary Records, Los Angeles] he liked me playing my own music, so I got the date. And yet it's been twelve years and they're still saying I haven't paid off the cost of the record." For a decade Ornette channeled his compositional ideas into providing frameworks for his combo to improvise on. Somehow he found time to write a string quartet and a piece for strings and woodwinds. Then he was awarded a Guggenheim, which allowed him to devote more time to writing, and last summer Skies of America, a full-length work for soloist and symphony orchestra, was given its premiere at the Newport-in-New York jazz festival. </p>
<p>In a sense, the composition is "about" the many things that have happened to Ornette Coleman since March 19, 1930, when he was born in Fort Worth, Texas, "under America's skies." More specifically, it is about being black, feeling exploited, working for recognition as an artist and a man in a society that has often been aloof, condescending, or hostile. He started on the alto saxophone at the age of fourteen, switched to tenor two years later, and played in numerous Texas rhythm-and-blues groups. He first left Fort Worth as a teen-ager, with a carnival band. He was dismissed from the tent show for playing bebop, stranded in New Orleans, threatened by racist sheriffs in Mississippi. In Baton Rouge a gang of roughnecks beat him up and threw his tenor off a hill, so he went back to the alto, which is still his principal horn. </p>
<p>He went to Los Angeles with Pee Wee Crayton's blues band and spent the better part of the fifties there, working at various odd jobs, studying music theory, practicing and composing whenever he could. He took up the violin. He continued to develop his own expression, and gradually a few musicians began to understand, especially the trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummers Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins. Ornette, Cherry, Haden, and Higgins worked with pianist Paul Bley at Los Angeles' Hillcrest club in 1958, and struck out on their own later that year. </p>
<p>During the sixties he was the subject of numerous articles, which either idealized or vilified him, and a series of "misunderstandings" with record executives and club owners made him more and more distrustful of the white middlemen who still control the presentation and dissemination of jazz and popular music in America. </p>
<p>"America is a very good country for a Caucasian human being," he says, "because regardless of what his native tongue is, if he changes his name and speaks English he could be of any Caucasian descent. And believe me, that is a very successful form of freedom. If you're black you can change your name, you can do anything you want to, but the color of your skin defeats you from having the same privileges as what I just spoke about. This is the tragedy of America.”</p>
<p><a contents="Sunday in America" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/Gbif7r7HytY">Sunday in America</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831152020-07-11T15:58:41-04:002022-01-21T19:31:53-05:00Will Marion Cook<p>Another one of Dvorak’s students during his short time in America was Will Marion Cook (1869-1944). Cook's early career was focused on classical music. He was born to free African-American parents (his father became the first Dean of the Howard University Law School) and began violin at age 13. When he was 15, Cook studied violin at Oberlin College. Frederick Douglass helped organize a fundraiser to send Cook to study in Europe, where he studied from 1887-89 at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik with Joseph Joachim, the famous violinist and associate of Brahms. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1890, he was unable to find employment at any musical institution, so began to teach privately. One of his students was Clarence Cameron White. Cook's earliest composition was Scenes from the Opera of Uncle Tom's Cabin--intended for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, but which was not performed. In 1894-95 he continued his studies at the National Conservatory for Music with Dvořák. </p>
<p>Cook turned to popular music as his classical career was not successful. He began writing songs and formed a publishing company. His first big success was the musical Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cakewalk (1898). He remained an important figure in the new century. He wrote and published many songs, was prominent as a conductor, and was the musical director for Bert Williams and George Walker's string of groundbreaking musicals. Cook also wrote music for The Southerners (1904), the first Broadway show to feature a racially integrated cast. </p>
<p>Outside the theater world, Cook gained a solid reputation as a choral and orchestral conductor. A historic concert on May 2, 1912, at Carnegie Hall featured his 150-voice chorus in a performance of Swing Along! In 1918, he founded the New York Syncopated Orchestra, later renamed the Southern Syncopated Orchestra. The instrumental ensemble, which included a twenty-voice choir, performed on tour throughout the United States and Europe until 1920. </p>
<p>As mentor and teacher, Cook influenced a generation of young African-American musicians, including Duke Ellington and singer Eva Jessye, the first black woman to become a professional choral conductor. Ellington acknowledged his debt to Cook noting that when he needed direction for developing a theme and asked Cook for advice, Cook told him, "You know you should go to the conservatory, but since you won't I'll tell you. First you find the logical way, and when you find it, avoid it, and let your inner self break through and guide you. Don't try to be anybody but yourself." Happily, Ellington followed this advice.</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/kXD-YcfQI70" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/kXD-YcfQI70">https://youtu.be/kXD-YcfQI70</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63831132020-07-11T15:49:44-04:002022-05-06T12:44:31-04:00Maurice Arnold Strothotte <p>Maurice Arnold Strothotte (1865-1937) was born in St Louis, Missouri. He later shortened his name to Maurice Arnold. His father was a physician and his mother a prominent pianist and his first teacher. At 13 he went to Cincinnati to study at the College of Music. 5 years later he studied counterpoint and composition with Georg Vierling and Heinrich Urban in Berlin. Urban attempted to discourage him when Arnold began to incorporate African-American "plantation" dance elements into his music. Some of Arnold’s compositions written just after his Berlin years show the influence of his travels through the neighboring countries of Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey. On his return to Germany he entered the Cologne Conservatory of Music where his first piano sonata was written and performed. He next went to Breslau, where, under the instruction of Max Bruch, he wrote one of his first major works, the cantata "The Wild Chase." Returning to Saint Louis he worked as a solo violinist, teacher, and opera conductor. </p>
<p>Maurice Arnold was one of many African-American students of Antonín Dvořák (William Dawson, Harvey Loomis, William Fisher, Will Marion Cook, Harry Burleigh) during the Bohemian composer's stay in the United States as director of the newly formed National Conservatory of Music of America in New York. Some sources say Arnold was the student for whom Dvorak had the highest hopes. We know Dvorak had made it his mission to raise awareness about African American and Native American music to the point of elevating it as the basis for the United States’ own musical nationalistic identity. A quote by Edward MacDowell, the so-called “Dean of American composers” of the day: “In spite of Dvořák’s efforts to dress up American music in Negro clothing, it is my opinion that foreign artistry should have no place in our music, if it is to be worth of our free country.” (!!) In another post I talked about the patronage that MacDowell’s mother bestowed upon Harry Burleigh to support his tuition at the National Conservatory. One can only hope she did not share her son’s views. </p>
<p>Arnold participated in Dvořák's famous January 23, 1894 concert about which the New York Herald wrote "It was a remarkable event. Each soloist with one exception belong to the colored race. Bodies had been liberated but the gates of the artistic world were still locked. (Conservatory founder) Jeannette Thurber's efforts in this effort were ably seconded by Dr. Dvořák." And while the program included Arnold's four "American Plantation Dances" the main attraction of the evening was Dvořák's arrangement of Stephen Foster's "The Old Folks at Home" for chorus and orchestra. "Plantation Dances." Op. 32, was nonetheless performed afterwards with frequency and was published for full orchestra as well as in arrangements for piano duet. </p>
<p>Arnold also wrote works for pianos, pianos multiple hands, violin and piano, six duets for violin and viola, other orchestral works, works for ballet, string orchestra, a symphony and two comic operas. Among his many vocal works is his setting of the poem, "I Think of Thee in Silent Night." He was also the author of the textbook "Some Points in Modern Orchestration." </p>
<p>I have had this post sitting on my computer for a while; it seems inconceivable to me that I cannot find a single recording (and only dubious sheet music on IMSLP, that may be from another composer) of any work by Dvorak’s “best hope.” On another website, I find mention that Dvorak’s “Piano piece #7 (in G flat Major) from his Humoresken, op. 101” (originally for violin) uses substantial parts of the American Plantation Dances written by Maurice Arnold Strothotte, one of Dvorak's 'most promising and gifted' American pupils.” This is the “Humoresque” that we of classical music know so well. Neither can I find a single image of him. I decided to post it today to see if anyone out there could help shed some light, or share recordings, of this neglected composer. #blackcomposers #mauricearnoldstrothotte #dvorakstealingtunesagain</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/O_wEjQY9-Ko" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/O_wEjQY9-Ko">https://youtu.be/O_wEjQY9-Ko</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63830892020-07-11T15:43:30-04:002022-05-21T04:52:29-04:00Justin Holland<p>Justin Holland (1819-1887) was a 19th-century American classical guitarist. He was born to free black parents in Virginia. After his parents’ deaths, the area was affected by the Nat Turner Rebellion (1831) which first led to a police bill that denied free blacks trials by jury and made any free blacks convicted of a crime subject to sale into slavery and relocation. Following the Rebellion, the General Assembly passed legislation making it “unlawful to teach reading and writing to slaves, free blacks, or mulattoes,” and restricting all blacks from holding religious meetings without the presence of a licensed white minister. </p>
<p>In 1833 he left Virginia for Massachusetts. In Boston, although he met and studied with musicians who were to be great influences on his career, he had to work hard as a manual laborer to make enough money to afford his education. At the age of 20, went to Oberlin College to study and remained there for 2 years, then travelled to Mexico to learn Spanish and more about the school of Spanish guitar playing. Returning to the U.S., he settled down in Cleveland and taught music and arranged music for guitar. He became known nationally for his arrangements, which were issued in collections of approximately 20 pieces, including Winter Evenings, Gems for the Guitar, Boquet of Melodies, and Flowers of Melody.[5] He also arranged about 30 duos for two guitars and another 30 for guitar and violin. </p>
<p>Holland devoted his life to making conditions better for African Americans, as a ranking member at national and state conventions, by working with the Underground Railroad, as well as with Frederick Douglass. He attempted to advance the acceptance of black members into the American Freemasons by gaining recognition from European and Central American chapters. He was secretary in charge of the "Central American Land Company", an organization which unsuccessfully attempted to purchase sufficient land in Central America to institute a free black colony (ultimately Central American colonization was opposed by foreign diplomats of those countries, and in 1858 Haiti offered free passage and aid for black settlers and emigrants began moving there). </p>
<p>He was an important guitarist of his generation. Over 300 of his guitar arrangements were published. His earlier editions predate the Civil War. He would have been a household name to anyone who played guitar in that era of home music-making. </p>
<p>The video posted here is an interesting story in and of itself, you can read about it by clicking here: </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/VQtzTHZvKl8&nbsp;" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/VQtzTHZvKl8">https://youtu.be/VQtzTHZvKl8 </a></p>
<p><a contents="https://wagner.edu/wagnermagazine/multitalented-guitarist-ernie-jackson-87-featured-by-the-met-museum/" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://wagner.edu/wagnermagazine/multitalented-guitarist-ernie-jackson-87-featured-by-the-met-museum/">https://wagner.edu/wagnermagazine/multitalented-guitarist-ernie-jackson-87-featured-by-the-met-museum/</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63786672020-07-07T13:35:45-04:002022-05-31T03:24:24-04:00Ignatius Sancho<p>Ignatius Sancho (c.1729–1780) was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic from Africa to the West Indies. He was baptized Ignatius by a bishop in Carthagena. His mother died of an unknown disease, and his father committed suicide rather than be enslaved. At the age of two, the boy was taken to Greenwich, near London, where he worked as a child slave. His owners, three sisters, named him “Sancho” after Don Quixote's companion. The three sisters treated Sancho badly, often threatening to return him to plantation slavery and refusing to educate him, thinking this to be the best way to keep him obedient. However, Sancho was befriended by the Duke of Montague, who recognized his quick wit and provided him with books to facilitate his education. When he was twenty, Sancho found life with the three sisters unbearable and persuaded the now-widowed Duchess of Montague to employ him. He worked for her as a butler and during this time wrote poetry, two stage plays and a Theory of Music dedicated to the Princess Royal. He was also a composer, with three collections of songs, minuets, and other pieces for violin, mandolin, flute and harpsichord all published anonymously. He was the first known Black Briton to vote in a British election, and the first person of African descent known to be given an obituary in the British press. Sancho's first public recognition came by way of his exchange of letters with Laurence Sterne, in which Sancho encouraged the novelist to use his pen to combat slavery. Sancho wrote: </p>
<p>That subject, handled in your striking manner, would ease the yoke (perhaps) of many – but if only of one – Gracious God! – what a feast to a benevolent heart! </p>
<p>His many letters, compiled and published soon after his death, were a glimpse into the major political, economic and cultural issues of the late 18th-century British Empire. Writing his friend's son who had expressed racist attitudes after a visit to India, Sancho wrote: </p>
<p>I am sorry to observe that the practice of your country (which as a resident I love – and for its freedom – and for the many blessings I enjoy in it – shall ever have my warmest wishes, prayers and blessings); I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country's conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East – West-Indies – and even on the coast of Guinea. The grand object of English navigators – indeed of all Christian navigators – is money – money – money – for which I do not pretend to blame them – Commerce was meant by the goodness of the Deity to diffuse the various goods of the earth into every part—to unite mankind in the blessed chains of brotherly love – society – and mutual dependence: the enlightened Christian should diffuse the riches of the Gospel of peace – with the commodities of his respective land – Commerce attended with strict honesty – and with Religion for its companion – would be a blessing to every shore it touched at. In Africa, the poor wretched natives blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil- are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing: the Christians' abominable traffic for slaves and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings encouraged by their Christian customers who carry them strong liquors to enflame their national madness – and powder – and bad fire-arms – to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/JyhHf_GzSv0" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/JyhHf_GzSv0">https://youtu.be/JyhHf_GzSv0</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63786382020-07-07T13:28:35-04:002022-05-26T01:48:08-04:00The Lambert Family<p>There were many free black and creole composers and musicians of New Orleans before the Civil War that moved to Europe to escape increasing racial tensions that not only were getting in the way of their careers, but their existence. Charles Lucien Lambert Sr, (1828-1896) was born to Charles Richard Lambert, musician and early teacher of Dédé. Like his friend and contemporary Louis Gottschalk, Lucien Sr. went to Paris by the mid-1850s. There he began to have many pieces published and celebrated: the publisher of his piano “Variations et Final sur I ‘air Au clair de la lune,” Op. 30 (1859) had to reprint it five times to meet its sales. </p>
<p>Charles Lucien moved his family to Brazil sometime in the 1860s. In Rio de Janeiro he opened a piano and music store and taught music, eventually becoming a member of the Brazilian National Institute of Music. In 1869, Gottschalk arrived in Rio for a series of spectacular appearances. Lucien’s son, Lucien Jr., then not yet a teenager, and his father both performed in at least one of Gottschalk’s monster concerts, in which thirty-one pianists played simultaneously. Lucien Sr. eventually became a good friend of the family of the Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth (1863-1934) as well as his first professional teacher. </p>
<p>His son, Lucièn Léon Guillaume, born in 1858 and died in 1945, became more well known than his father. Lucièn Léon returned to France, became a pupil of Theodore Dubois and Jules Massenet. In Spain his music became so famous that he was decorated by the King. He was to work on a larger scale than his father, producing ballets, symphonic music, choral works and a large amount of instrumental music. Along with his half brother Sydney Lambert, he had a career in Portugal, serving in the royal court. He was later to teach in Paris, but spent the latter part of his life in Portugal where he died. </p>
<p><a contents="https://open.spotify.com/track/03uMPLcU6EhydwsGBGtZYP?si=9fMs5E59RcWwPlB2cO0tJw" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://open.spotify.com/track/03uMPLcU6EhydwsGBGtZYP?si=9fMs5E59RcWwPlB2cO0tJw">https://open.spotify.com/track/03uMPLcU6EhydwsGBGtZYP?si=9fMs5E59RcWwPlB2cO0tJw</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63786102020-07-07T13:02:17-04:002020-07-07T13:02:17-04:00Coleridge Taylor Perkinson <p>Some would say that it’s a bit of a burden to be named after a famous figure. However, listening to and reading about the work of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004) one can only think that here was a life as interesting and productive as his namesake, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He wrote a violin concerto, a viola concerto, and a cello concerto, as well as other works for various solo instruments and orchestra, a string quartet, various instrumental sonatas, symphonic works, vocal music and ballet scores for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Alvin Ailey; and I guarantee that if you are “of a certain age” you will have heard some of his music in film and TV growing up. </p>
<p>He met Stravinsky while in high school at New York’s High School of Music and Art, and won the La Guardia Prize for music by the time of his graduation. While at the Manhattan School of Music, he developed an interest in jazz—no wonder as his classmates were Julius Watkins, Herbie Mann, Donald Byrd, and Max Roach (in whose quartet he later served as pianist). He studied conducting at the Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood) and started several orchestras as well as guest conducing all over the world. His eclectic background equipped him well to contribute to the development of rhythm and blues from the slick pop singles of early Motown and the rawer soul of Stax/Volt Records to the more lush, fully orchestrated sounds of disco in the late 1970s. </p>
<p>I’ve spent the morning listening to his music, it is quite amazing. The piece of all of these I am posting to listen today is “Blue/s Forms for solo violin (1972)” - one website calls it “a deep reverie of black experience as seen through the filter of Paganiniesque writing.” This is a version beautifully performed by Amadi on the viola. #blackcomposers </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/4edpR8ZXPMY" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/4edpR8ZXPMY">https://youtu.be/4edpR8ZXPMY</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63786012020-07-07T12:34:18-04:002022-05-17T15:33:58-04:00Fela Sowande<p>Samuel-Coleridge Taylor served as inspiration for another composer who went on to “Westernize” the music of West Africa. (Chief Olufela Obafunmilayo) Fela Sowande (1905-1987), was the son of an Anglican priest who was a main force in the development of Nigerian sacred music. Every biography mentions that he trained in the “classical European style,” attending King’s College and the Royal College of Organists in Lagos, then going to the University of London and becoming a Fellow at Trinity College in London. He composed music for organ, choral, solo, and orchestral works and during WWII worked for the British Ministry of Information, and then the BBC Africa Service. During his time with the BBC Africa Service, he collected many African melodies, which were later developed into original compositions, in particular, Six Sketches for Full Orchestra and the African Suite. The finale of the African Suite, Akinla, began as a popular Highlife tune - combining colonial Western military and popular music with West African elements and a history of its own. Sowande then featured it as a cornerstone of his "argument" that West African music could be heard on European terms: the African Suite was originally broadcast by the BBC to the British colonies in Africa. the last movement later became the theme music for a show on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. </p>
<p>Sowande composed most of his works during a time of rising nationalism, with one African country after another achieving its independence from a colonial power. He consciously employed both Nigerian elements and European forms, and one of his biographers writes: </p>
<p>When Sowande conducted the New York Philharmonic in his Nigerian Folk Symphony in 1964, a critic lamented that it sounded more European than Nigerian. What he missed was that, although the orchestral sonority was certainly not rooted in Africa, the rhythms, scales, and melodies were idealizations of Nigerian sources. Sowande thus joined the other nationalists, following the same process traveled by William Grant Still. </p>
<p>In the late 60s he moved to the U.S. teaching at Howard University, then the University of Pittsburgh, then ended up at Kent State in Ohio. He was married to Eleanor McKinney, who was one of the founders of Pacifica Radio. He died in Ravenna and is buried in Randolph Township, Ohio. </p>
<p>In addition to his position as a professor, Sowande also held the chieftaincy title of the Bariyo of Lagos. </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/Njx_0TFzPKs" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/Njx_0TFzPKs">https://youtu.be/Njx_0TFzPKs</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63786002020-07-07T12:30:43-04:002022-05-28T05:55:57-04:00Amanda Aldridge<p>There is not much recorded music of Amanda Aldridge (1866-1956), but her story and that of her family is perhaps even more interesting. She was born the third child of African American Shakespearian actor Ira Frederick Aldridge and his Swedish second wife, Amanda Brandt. Her father was quite well known having a career as a Shakespearean actor on the world stages of England, Europe, and the United States, as well as one of the only African American actors to be honored at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. Although he died when Amanda was only a year old, his children and their mother strove to honor his legacy by continuing as entertainers and promoting African American heritage. The eldest son Frederick, who also died young, was a pianist and composer. Amanda’s older sister Luranah was for a time a successful opera singer, living in Paris and performing on the continent in principal opera houses such as the Royal Opera House and the Bayreuth Festival. Luranah also was friends with Richard Wagner’s daughter Eva. </p>
<p>Amanda studied voice with Jenny Lind and harmony and counterpoint with Frederick Bridge at the Royal College of Music in London. Upon graduation, she embarked on a fairly successful singing career of her own. She started creating and composing art songs that often contained poetry by African American poets, seeking to compose art songs that gave voice to African Americans. She understood that her father had been exposed to an unbalanced playing field in his career, as well as racial bias. Her most famous work was Three African Dances for piano, which was inspired by West African Drumming. All of her compositions were under a pen name “Montague Ring,” which by many accounts was simply a desire to stand on her own as a composer and not gain merit with her father’s name. Her music became extremely popular in Europe in the early 20th century. Written predominantly in a romantic parlor song style fashionable in that day, Montague Ring's songs for voice and piano numbered almost thirty, as well as seven suites for piano that were also arranged for orchestra and military band. </p>
<p>At home, her life was not as easy. Her brother had committed suicide while “in a high fever”, and her sister became crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and spent the remainder of her life in a wheelchair being cared for by Amanda. Backed by her mentor Jenny Lind, she began to spend more time teaching; attracting many of London’s most talented students. The success of Amanda’s teaching was documented in the London Times: “The pupils of Miss Aldridge all, or nearly all, have in common one invaluable attribute of a singer—that is style.” Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, and Marian Anderson were among her most well-known students, inspiring her to dedicate some of her songs to them. </p>
<p>When she was eighty-seven Amanda apparently still took a forty minute bus ride to teach singing and diction for several hours. In 1954, at the age of eighty-eight, she made her first television appearance in a British program entitled "Music For You." Hailed as “one of the oldest artists ever to appear on Television,” Amanda was described in the publicity as “still as lively as a cricket.” She died two years later, just one day short of her 90th birthday. At the time of her death, Amanda was considered to be the last surviving pupil of the late Jenny Lind. #blackcomposers </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/68sUH36DEzs" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/68sUH36DEzs">https://youtu.be/68sUH36DEzs</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63785922020-07-07T12:14:43-04:002022-06-01T21:25:21-04:00Nina Simone<p>Since Mississippi made the news recently for finally deciding to get rid of the Confederate flag, only 126 years too late, today’s #Blackcomposer late edition will be about Nina Simone (1933-2003) </p>
<p>Nina Simone (Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon) started out on the piano at the age of 3. She gave her classical recital debut at 12; during the performance, her parents ,who were in the front row, were forced to be in the back of the hall to make room for white people. She refused to play until they got moved back to the front, a foreshadowing of her future civil rights involvement. She attended Juilliard, and prepared an audition at Curtis, but did not get in, a decision she later said was racially based. She started taking private lessons with Vladimir Sokoloff who then taught at Curtis. To fund her lessons she started playing and singing at a bar in Atlantic City, taking the stage name Nina Simone to avoid detection by her mother of playing non-classical “devil’s music.” She soon started recording pop and jazz standards, getting (bad) record contracts but ultimately losing her creative control over her work, making her indifferent to the whole recording industry. </p>
<p>"Mississippi Goddam" was written in less than an hour in 1963, and declared to be her "first civil rights song"[1]. This was her response to the June 1963 murder of Medgar Evers and the September 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four young black girls and partially blinded a fifth. It is one of her most famous protest songs and self-written compositions. In 2019, "Mississippi Goddam" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.[2]Shortly after the first performance at the Village Gate , the song was recorded at Carnegie Hall, released as a single and became an anthem during the Civil Rights Movement.[5] "Mississippi Goddam" was banned in several Southern states, ostensibly because of the word "goddam" in the title.[6] Boxes of promotional singles sent to radio stations around the country were returned with each record cracked in half.[7] </p>
<p>Simone performed the song at the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches when she and other black activists, including Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin and Harry Belafonte crossed police lines. </p>
<p>Nina went into self-imposed exile, first living in Barbados, where she had an affair with the Prime Minister, then Liberia, then Switzerland and the Netherlands, returning briefly to the U.S. but settling in France by the early 90s. She always felt that “Mississippi Goddam” ultimately harmed her career; though she said she wouldn’t change her involvement as a civil rights acitivist. In a 1986 issue of “Jet” magazine, she said “it’s hard for me to incorporate those songs now because they aren’t relevant to the times.” </p>
<p>Sadly, she couldn’t have been more wrong.</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/LJ25-U3jNWM" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/LJ25-U3jNWM">https://youtu.be/LJ25-U3jNWM</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63785902020-07-07T12:02:13-04:002022-02-21T03:40:53-05:00Florence Price<p>Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953) was born in a racially-integrated community in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her mother was a school teacher and her father, the city’s only black dentist. At the age of four, she played in her first piano recital and her first composition was published at the age of eleven. After graduating as high school valedictorian at age 14, she waited 3 more years before setting out for the New England Conservatory to pursue a double major in organ and piano performance. At NEC she studied theory with George Chadwick , and began to think seriously about composing. Upon graduating she took several teaching jobs, winding her way through Arkansas and Georgia before coming back to Little Rock to compose and teach privately. </p>
<p>Little Rock was very segregated then, and Price was refused admission to the all-white Arkansas Music Teachers Association. She founded the Little Rock Club of Musicians and taught music at the segregated black schools, but as lynchings became more frequent, she moved her family to Chicago in 1927. A year later, as her professional life was taking off and music was getting published, she divorced her husband and moved in with her student and friend, Margaret Bonds (another composer featured here on this blog). </p>
<p>Eventually, Price joined the R. Nathaniel Dett Club of Music and the Allied Arts and did additional study at the American Conservatory of Music, Chicago Teachers College, Central YMCA College, the University of Chicago and Chicago Musical College (now Chicago College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt University) as a student in composition and orchestration with Carl Busch, graduating in 1934. She eventually composed more than 300 works including symphonies, organ works, piano concertos, works for violin, arrangements of spirituals, art songs, and chamber works. Her pop songs were composed under the pseudonym “Vee Jay” </p>
<p>Florence Price became friends with Marian Anderson, composers William L. Dawson of Tuskegee Institute, Will Marion Cook, Abbie Mitchell, Langston Hughes and many others. </p>
<p>She continued to compose throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, penning two concertos for violin and orchestra, two additional symphonies, one of which, Symphony No. 2, has apparently been lost. She gained recognition from as far away as England where conductor Sir John Barbirolli commissioned her to compose a suite for string instruments which had its premiere with the famed Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. However, she still had so many obstacles placed in her way, as evidenced by a letter to Koussevitsky in 1943: </p>
<p>“My dear Dr. Koussevitzky, To begin with I have two handicaps—those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.” </p>
<p>She plainly saw these factors as obstacles to her career, because she then spoke of Koussevitzky “knowing the worst.” Frederick Stock, the German-born music director of the Chicago Symphony, took up her cause—but most others ignored her, Koussevitzky included. </p>
<p>In 2010 the Center for Black Music Research commissioned Trevor Weston, an associate professor of music at Drew University, to reconstruct the long-lost orchestral score for Price’s Concerto in One Movement for Piano and Orchestra in order to perform the concerto and release an album of the composer’s work which would become the third issue in the CBMR series, “Recorded Music of the African Diaspora.” </p>
<p>In 2009, a couple was renovating an abandoned house in St. Anne IL where they found boxes of musical scores. It turns out this had been her summer home, and in the boxes contained the scores to the (until then) lost violin concerti. They contacted the University of Arkansas, where Price’s materials are held within the Special Collections. Other holdings are at the Library of Congress. Included in the Arkansas collections is correspondence to and from John Alden Carpenter, Roland Hayes, Eugène Goossens, Harry T. Burleigh, and others. </p>
<p>Concerto in One Movement </p>
<p><a contents="https://open.spotify.com/track/2ebBUIs1H6a56kwigxbXDd?si=w19CPwz0RkCLjEVoE9nXfg" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://open.spotify.com/track/2ebBUIs1H6a56kwigxbXDd?si=w19CPwz0RkCLjEVoE9nXfg">https://open.spotify.com/track/2ebBUIs1H6a56kwigxbXDd?si=w19CPwz0RkCLjEVoE9nXfg</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63774042020-07-06T12:09:15-04:002022-05-10T03:56:57-04:00Harry Burleigh<p>The story of Harry Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) is one linked to that of Antonin Dvorak. </p>
<p>Burleigh received his first musical training from his mother. As a youth, he was given a job as a doorman at the musical evenings hosted by his mother’s employer, exposing him to leading Italian opera singers of the day. At twenty-six, through the support of Frances MacDowell (mother of composer Edward MacDowell), Burleigh received a scholarship to the National Conservatory of Music in New York where he studied with Rubin Goldmark and others.</p>
<p>Most significantly, his time at the Conservatory coincided with Antonin Dvorak’s time as Director (this was the job for which Dvorak had agreed to come to America). Besides serving as a copyist for Dvorak, Burleigh spent hours recalling and performing the African-American spirituals and plantation songs he had learned from his maternal grandfather for the Czech composer. He was encouraged by Dvorak to preserve these melodies in his own compositions, as Dvorak, the consummate musical nationalist, felt that here lay the treasures of America’s national musical identity that should be promoted and developed. Dvorák's use of the spirituals "Goin' Home" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in his Symphony no. 9 in E minor ("From the New World") is often said to be directly a result of his sessions with Burleigh. </p>
<p>In 1894, Burleigh applied for and was given for the post of soloist at St. George's Episcopal Church of New York over the (racist) objections of the congregation. Through his 50 year association with the church, he only missed one performance and won the hearts and the respect of the entire church community. </p>
<p>Following a string of publishing successes with Schirmer, by 1900 Burleigh was the first African-American chosen as soloist at Temple Emanu-El in New York and by 1911 he was working as an editor for G. Riccordi. He eventually composed over two hundred works in the genre of concert song. The widespread success of his setting of Deep River(1917) for which he is most well known, inspired the publication of nearly a dozen more spirituals the same year. As his spiritual arrangements become increasingly popular with concert soloists, a tradition of concluding concerts with a set of spirituals was established. </p>
<p>His instrumental output includes the unpublished Six Plantation Melodies for violin and piano (1901), From the Southland for piano (1910), and Southland Sketches for violin and piano (1916). He was a charter member of the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) </p>
<p>Southland Sketches </p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/VeIeC2ur-0s" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/VeIeC2ur-0s">https://youtu.be/VeIeC2ur-0s</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63773632020-07-06T11:42:38-04:002021-10-26T15:16:36-04:00William Levi Dawson<p>William Dawson (1899-1992) was born to a former slave. In 1912, Dawson ran away from home to study music full-time as a pre-college student at the Tuskegee Institute (now University) under the tutelage of school president Booker T. Washington. Dawson paid his tuition by being a music librarian for the music department as well as manual laborer in the school’s Agricultural Division. He played in both the band and orchestra, composing and traveling extensively with the Tuskegee Singers for five years and had learned to play most of the instruments by the time he graduated from the high school division in 1921. In 1925 he graduated from the Horner Institute with a bachelor’s degree in music theory and composition. While still an undergraduate student, he worked as music director in both a vocational college and a high school. In 1926, Dawson moved to Chicago to study composition at the American Conservatory of Music, where he earned his master’s degree in 1927. Dawson also played trombone with the Redpath Chautauqua and the Chicago Civic Symphony Orchestra. In September 1930, Dawson accepted Tuskegee Institute’s invitation to direct its School of Music, a position that he held until his retirement in 1955. During his directorship, in 1932, Tuskegee’s choir performed at the grand opening of the Radio City Music Hall in New York, at the White House for President Herbert Hoover, and at Hyde Park, New York, for future president Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1946, the choir broke the race barrier at Washington D.C.’s Constitution Hall as they became the first African Americans to perform there, something even Marian Anderson had been denied (by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1939). </p>
<p>Although he wrote some chamber music, his best orchestral and choral works were based on spirituals like his Negro Folk Symphony (1934), which was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Accounts of the concert describe the spontaneous applause at the conclusion of the first movement, which in 1934 Philadelphia was unheard of. In this way he continued the lineage of American music that had been attempted to be started by Dvorak (“The future of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States”). It was revised in 1952 with greater African rhythms inspired by the composer’s trip to West Africa. The composition was “an attempt to convey the missing elements that were lost when Africans came into bondage outside of their homeland.” He died in 1990, and is buried at Tuskegee University where his legacy continues through the Golden Voices Choir.</p>
<p><a contents="Negro Folk Symphony" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/wPhDb3XnXHs">Negro Folk Symphony</a> </p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63754562020-07-03T21:47:03-04:002022-01-21T19:30:13-05:00Irene Britton Smith<p>It is difficult to find much recorded music of composer Irene Britton Smith (1907-1999). She was born to parents of African-American and African-American and Crow-Cherokee descent. In her early years she played first piano, then violin; she wished to study music formally but financial realities led her first to a career in elementary education. She finally took a one course a year at the American Conservatory, starting with theory then form/analysis, and counterpoint. She played violin in a few orchestras, one the all-black Harrison Ferrell Symphony Orchestra. When she married, her husband wished to pursue a grad degree in chemistry, but it was hard for qualified black people to get jobs in Illinois, so they lived apart for 10 years. In 1936 Smith wrote to Florence Price after hearing her talk at Lincoln Center. She received encouragement for the composer, and decided to work to get a degree in theory and composition at the American Conservatory, which she received in 1938. Although music and composing may have been the love of her life, most of her energy was required in her profession of teaching in the public schools. Yet she persisted, doing graduate studies at Juilliard and a summer at Tanglewood. It wasn’t until 1956 that she finished her grad degree, this time at De Paul. Two years later she was in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger, who told her "You are a born musician. Follow your ear.” Later years were spent composing, but also developing a new method of learning reading for the Chicago Public School System. She became a educational docent for the Chicago Symphony after retiring from teaching in 1978. Not many of her works are known; only about 3 dozen. About half are vocal, the rest instrumental: ten instrumental works for solo piano (including two arrangements of Bartok), two for violin, one string trio, and four for orchestra (including an arrangement of Three Fantastic Dances by Shostakovich). </p>
<p>Towards the end of her life she had difficulty recognizing her own music because she suffered from Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. She died the age of 91 of complications from these diseases and was buried in Lincoln Cemetery, where Florence Price is also buried.</p>
<p><a contents="https://youtu.be/eQGAtR6BorU" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/eQGAtR6BorU">https://youtu.be/eQGAtR6BorU</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63754402020-07-03T21:40:40-04:002021-12-29T16:10:46-05:00George Theophilus Walker<p>George Walker (1922-2018) is often identified as an "African-American" composer instead of simply an American composer. In a 1987 interview, Walker said there are two sides to that label. </p>
<p>"I've benefited from being a black composer in the sense that when there are symposiums given of music by black composers, I would get performances by orchestras that otherwise would not have done the works," Walker said. "The other aspect, of course, is that if I were not black, I would have had a far wider dispersion of my music and more performances.” </p>
<p>While still in high school, he began to attend Howard University, then went to Oberlin where he graduated at 18 with the highest honors. From there he attended Curtis, studying with Rudolf Serkin, chamber music with Primrose and Piatagorsky, and composition with Barber’s teacher, Rosario Scalero. Later, Walker received a Fulbright Fellowship and went to Paris to study with Boulanger. </p>
<p>Unfortunately in our profession, like many composers of color, he had the (dubious) honor of firsts: first black instrumentalist to perform in New York’s Town Hall (sponsored by the Zimbalists!), first black instrumentalist to solo with the Philadelphia Orchestra, first black instrumentalist to have major management; then later in a varied career in academia being the first black man in various faculty positions, as chair, and so on. He was also the first black composer to receive the Pulitzer for his work “Lilacs” for voice and orchestra. He wrote works for every genre: orchestral, chamber, piano, organ, vocal. </p>
<p>Walker received two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Rockefeller Fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and honorary doctorates from six institutions, including Oberlin and Spelman Colleges. In 1997, Washington D.C.'s mayor, Marion Barry, declared June 17th as George Walker Day. </p>
<p>The work featured today was originally a movement from his string quartet, which he later orchestrated for string orchestra. Here in its original version, beautifully performed by, it deserves a place of prominence in our standard repertoire. </p>
<p><a contents="String Quartet No. 1" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/W17alPNaVfY">String Quartet No. 1</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63754372020-07-03T21:37:31-04:002023-12-10T12:01:19-05:00Julia Amanda Perry<p>Another one of Nadia Boulanger’s Paris students, Julia Perry (1924-1979) was born in Kentucky. Her father was a doctor and amateur pianist, who once accompanied the tenor Roland Hayes on tour (unclear in what role). Julia started off on the violin but switched to the piano after 2 years. She did her musical training at Westminster Choir College and Juilliard, before receiving two Guggenheim fellowships to study first in Florence, with Lugia Dallapiccola and then in Paris with Boulanger. She returned to the United States in 1959 to become part of the music faculty at Florida A & M College (now University) and later took a teaching position at Atlanta University. Throughout the 1960s she organized and conducted concerts around the world for the U.S. Information Service (USIS). By the late 1960s her works had received wide acclaim and were performed by the New York Philharmonic and other major orchestras. Perry won awards and accolades from the National Association of Negro Musicians, the Boulanger Grand Prix for her viola sonata, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1971, however, Perry suffered the first of two strokes which left her hospitalized for several years. She taught herself to write with her left hand so she could continue to compose. During her life, Perry completed 12 symphonies, two concertos, and three operas, in addition to numerous smaller pieces. Julia Amanda Perry died at age 55 on April 29, 1979 in Akron, Ohio. Her music is characterized by extensive use of percussion, and interesting neoclassical harmonies. #Blackcomposers </p>
<p>https://youtu.be/4YYFTBgMZ5E</p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63754352020-07-03T21:34:27-04:002023-12-10T12:01:19-05:00Harry Lawrence Freeman<p>In researching the opera composer Harry Lawrence Freeman (1869-1954) again I come to a troubling theme running through accounts of all these black composers. “First black composer to…” “the black Mozart” (referring to Chevalier de Saint-Georges/Joseph Bologne, who was born BEFORE Mozart). Freeman, quoted somewhere as being the “black Wagner” admittedly was inspired to begin composing his own music after attending a performance of Tannhäuser, but the focus on “firsts” is a stark reminder of all the years African-Americans have been kept out of institutions. </p>
<p>By the age of 22, Freeman had founded the Freeman Opera Company in Denver. His first opera, Epithalia, was performed at the Deutsches Theater there in 1891. That company went on to produce and stage two more of his operas, even taking them on the road to Chicago and Cleveland before the turn of the century. In 1894, Freeman moved to Cleveland, and began formal training in music theory with the conductor of the Cleveland Symphony. In 1900 the Cleveland Orchestra gave readings of excerpts from Freeman's operas. </p>
<p>Around 1908, he moved his family to Harlem where Scott Joplin asked for Freeman's help in revising his three-act opera, “Treemonisha" (saving that for a later post). In 1920, he opened the Salem School of Music on 133rd Street (later renamed Freeman School of Music), and founded the Negro Grand Opera Company, which produced several productions of his own works. </p>
<p>In a 1935 letter, the manager of the Metropolitan Opera claimed to have considered Freeman’s The Octoroon, but “to our regret, we do not see our way clear to accept this work.” The last couple of decades of his life were marked with frustration as he struggled to get any performances of his work. Almost all of his music was unpublished at the time of his death, and no recordings of his work have ever been released commercially. Twenty-one operas, as well as many of his other works, survive in manuscripts kept in a collection of his papers at Columbia University. </p>
<p>Voodoo is Freeman's best known work. Although Freeman finished composing the opera in 1914, it was not premiered until fourteen years later, on Broadway, with an all-black cast. It got its first revival in the production linked here in 2015, for which the New York Times review called it "lackluster"and "stolid and slow" and the Guardian (UK) called it "audacious and blazingly powerful" and "rare find". An interesting difference in perspective from two different countries' press. </p>
<p>#blackcomposers #opera #blackopera </p>
<p><a contents="Voodoo Queen Aria" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://youtu.be/6ObLqD8NIvI">Voodoo Queen Aria</a></p>Ritaporfiris.comtag:ritaporfiris.com,2005:Post/63754182020-07-03T21:19:06-04:002022-05-17T07:28:28-04:00George Bridgetower<p>18th century classical violinist George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower is now best remembered for his association with Ludwig von Beethoven, who originally dedicated his Violin Sonata Op. 47 to the young Afro-European musician, and first performed the sonata with Bridgetower. A copy of the sonata autographed by Beethoven is inscribed: “Sonata mulattica composta per il mullato.” </p>
<p>Sources differ on details of Bridgetower’s life. His birth date is between 1778-1780. His mother was Polish European, his father was of African ancestry, and he was born in Poland. During Bridgetower’s early childhood, his father was said to have worked in the household of Prince Esterhazy, patron of Beethoven and Haydn, whose castle which maintained an opera house and a private orchestra. </p>
<p>He exhibited considerable musical talent in his childhood, giving successful concerts in England and France in 1789. In 1791, George IV took an interest in him, and undertook his musical education, with tutelage with François-Hippolyte Barthélémon (leader of the Royal Opera), Croatian-Italian composer Giovanni Giornovichi (Ivan Jarnovic), and with Thomas Attwood (organist at St Paul's Cathedral and professor at the Royal Academy of Music). Bridgetower performed in around 50 concerts in London theatres, including Covent Garden, Drury Lane and the Haymarket Theatre, between 1789 and 1799, and was employed by the Prince to perform in his orchestra in Brighton and London. In the spring of 1789 Bridgetower performed to great acclaim in Paris, with Thomas Jefferson and his family in attendance. </p>
<p>In 1803 he went to Vienna, where he performed with Beethoven. Beethoven was impressed, and as he was finishing up his ninth violin sonata in A major (Op.47) dedicated it to Bridgetower, with the dedication described above. The piece received its first public performance at a concert in May 1803, with Beethoven on pianoforte and Bridgetower on violin. Bridgetower had to read the violin part of the second movement from Beethoven's copy, over his shoulder. He made a slight amendment to his part, which Beethoven gratefully accepted, jumping up to say "Noch einmal, mein lieber Bursch!" ("Once more, my dear fellow!"). Beethoven also presented Bridgetower with his tuning fork, now held by the British Library. The friendship disintegrated when Bridgetower insulted a woman who turned out to be Beethoven's friend. Beethoven broke off all relations with Bridgetower and changed the dedication of the new violin sonata to the violin virtuoso Rudolphe Kreutzer, who never played it, saying that it had already been performed once and was too difficult . Yet the piece is now known as the Kreutzer Sonata.</p>
<p>Bridgetower returned to England, where he had a career teaching and performing. He was elected to the Royal Society of Musicians on 4 October 1807, and performed with the Royal Philharmonic Society orchestra. He later travelled abroad, particularly to Italy, where his daughter lived. He died in Peckham in south London, leaving his estate of £1,000 to his deceased wife's sister. The house was demolished in 1970. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.</p>
<p>There are not many recordings of his music, although a dissertation on Bridgetower was written by Dr. Nicole Cherry, violinist, and we hope to hear some recordings from that project soon.</p>Ritaporfiris.com