[Africa:
Piano Music of William Grant Still;
Denver Oldham, piano; Koch 3 7084 2H1 (1991)]
PRX,
Public Radio Exchange, presents a one-hour documentary which can be
heard and read online at any time:
Series: Compact
Discoveries
From: Fred Flaxman
Length: 00:58:00
Transcript
(Excerpt)
Compact
Discoveries®
a
series of one-hour radio programs produced, written, hosted, and
edited by Fred Flaxman
©2012 by Fred Flaxman
Program 191
"William Grant Still"
MUSIC: Still: excerpt from the first movement of Symphony No. 1
(“Afro-American”) performed by the Fort Smith Symphony conducted
by John Jeter [Naxos 8.559174, Track 7] [under the following]
The life and career of the African-American composer William Grant
Still is a true American success story. He rose from humble
beginnings to work as an arranger while studying composition with
George Chadwick and Edgar Varèse. An active participant in the
Harlem Renaissance, he embraced African-American forms such as the
blues, spirituals, and jazz, in addition to other ethnic American
genres.
MUSIC: fades out
This is Compact Discoveries. I’m your guide, Fred Flaxman, and
for the next hour we’re going to hear two of this composer’s
finest works: his Symphony Number 1 from 1930, which is known as the
Afro-American Symphony, and his three-movement symphonic poem,
Africa, which is also from 1930.
William Grant Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi, on May 11,
1895, to a family of Negro, Indian, Spanish, Irish, and Scotch
ancestry. His father was the town’s bandmaster, but he died when
William was only three. His mother was a teacher.
After his father died, Still’s mother moved with him to Little
Rock, where he had his first musical experience, studying the violin.
At his mother’s urging, he later began medical studies, but dropped
out in favor of music. Still initially worked as an arranger for several popular
performers, including W.C. Handy, composer of the St. Louis Blues,
and Artie Shaw, whose hit Frenesi he orchestrated.
Still’s music studies at Oberlin College were ended by the First
World War when he served in the Navy. After the war he moved to New
York, working for Handy and playing the oboe in pit orchestras while
he studied composition.
Still arrived in New York in the 1920s, at the time of the
cultural awakening of African-Americans known as the Harlem
Renaissance. This is when his attention turned to classical
composition for good. In 1930 he moved to Los Angeles to work as an
arranger for Paul Whiteman. There he also expanded his horizons into
film and radio. That year saw the composition of both works that we
are going to listen to in this hour, beginning with Still’s First
Symphony, the Afro-American. This work remains to this day his most
popular and most recorded work.
In this Naxos compact disc, the Fort Smith, Arkansas, Symphony is
conducted by John Jeter.
MUSIC: Still: Symphony No. 1 (“Afro-American”) performed by
the Fort Smith Symphony conducted by John Jeter [Naxos 8.559174,
Tracks 5, 6, 7, and 8] [24:57]
William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1, the Afro-American. John
Jeter conducted the Fort Smith Symphony, the oldest orchestra in the
state of Arkansas, founded in 1923. Jeter has been its conductor
since 1997. [
William
Grant Still (1895-1978) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which
features a comprehensive Works List by Prof. Dominique-René de
Lerma, http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com]
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