[William Grant Still: Africa; American Symphony Orchestra; Leon Botstein, conductor; (27:11) MP3 Available July 14, 2010]
On June 26, 2010 AfriClassical posted: “William Grant Still's 'Africa' by American Symphony Orchestra on MP3 July 14, 2010.” Today a review of the release was published by The National of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates:
The National
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates
Gemma Champ”
“ASO
If you’re wondering who William Grant Still (1895-1978) is, you’re not alone. The US composer, a contemporary of greats such as George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, is strangely unknown and unperformed, in spite of the laudable attempts of organisations such as the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein to revive his works. Still was an African American composer, a fact that both informed his sound and prevented the popular success he might have expected, given the quality and accessibility of his work. Though championed by eminent musicians during his lifetime, 1920s-40s America simply could not equate classical music with the African-American community, which was finding cultural prominence through the Harlem Renaissance. Still worked as an arranger for bands such as Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, wrote film scores and was the first black American to conduct a major symphony orchestra. He composed a corpus of extraordinary works that combine the modernist training he received at the hands of Varèse with the traditional folk culture of his grandmother’s Spirituals and the urbanity of Harlem’s jazz. This, one of his loveliest symphonic works, is a three-movement Gershwin-esque ode to Africa – a continent he never visited but knowingly endowed with all the Hollywood exoticism his American-born imagination could conjure.” [William Grant Still (1895-1978) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a complete Works List by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma of Lawrence University Conservatory.]
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