[Africa: Piano Music of William Grant Still; Denver Oldham, piano; Koch 3 7084 2H1 (1991)]
Yesterday AfriClassical posted: Eyes Closed, Listening: "I discovered a new composer - Leo Brouwer (1939 -)." We are delighted to post a most gracious and enthusiastic reply on Eyes Closed, Listening: "Today Eyes Closed, Listening made its first online friend: William J. Zick at Africlassical, a fantastic site (and accompanying blog) about 'African heritage in classical music.' Commenting on my previous post about Leo Brouwer, Zick writes: 'Leo Brouwer is one of the best known classical guitarists in the world, with a particularly large number of film scores to his credit among his many compositions. “Cuban Landscape with Rain” is one of my favorite Brouwer works.
“Ooo! This is so cool. The African influence on classical has always fascinated me, since I have a strong background in both jazz and contemporary African choral. The African influence on classical cannot be understated: where would composers like Bernstein if we lacked ideas like call and response, or compound time? And his site delivers the goods: it has biographies and short audio snippets from over fifty African-descended composers, many of which I didn’t know about. Duke Ellington is there, of course, but so is William Grant Still and the eighteenth-century Le Chevalier de Saint-George.
“And, as promised, Zick also has a full bio and complete discography on Le Brouwer. Africlassical is a great site, and it’s clear Zick is both informed and passionate about his field. It’ll be at the top of my list whenever I need to do speculative pop-and-classical research now. Also, in a delicious bit of web serendipity, Zick blogged the Michigan Civil War Blog's coverage of the Grant Park Orchestra’s performance last week of In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy, composed by William Grant Still. I attended that performance! Yay, postmodern everything-is-connected-ism!” Full Post
African Influence on Classical MusicEyes Closed, Listening
Leo Brouwer
William Grant Still
In Memoriam at Grant Park
Composers of African Descent
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