AudAud.com: 'Margaret Bonds was one of the first African American women composer-pianists to become well known.'

[Muses Nine: Eight American Composers Plus One Pianist; Margaret Allison Bonds]

Margaret Allison Bonds (1913-1978) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a comprehensive Works List by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma, http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.

Audiophile Audition

“‘Muses Nine’ = DIANE THOME: Spiral Journey; MOLLY JOYCE: Medium Piano; EMMA LOU DIEMER: Toccata for Piano; MARION BAUER: Six Preludes, Op. 15; ELLEN TAFFE ZWILICH: Lament; AMY BEACH: Dreaming; Honeysuckle; Scottish Legend; From Blackbird Hills; LIBBY LARSEN: Mephisto Rag; MARGARET BONDS: Troubled Water – Becky Billock, piano – Muses Nine (Becky Billock) [Distr. by CD Baby] 62:56 ***:

“Becky Billock is a very fine pianist who is clearly pursuing her own muse of the work of female composers. I agree, actually, that the first step to recognizing and promoting artists who are from 'outside the box' of typical classical music is to play their works. The second step is allowing the audience is to decide whether or not they like and appreciate the quality of the works they are hearing; incidental to any categorical commonality like the fact that – in this case – all the composers happen to be women.

“Margaret Bonds was one of the first African American women composer-pianists to become well known. Her Troubled Water is a fantasy on the spiritual 'Wade in the Water'. The treatment of the original melody is inventive and somewhat complex, being wrought through a series of variations, but the piece is fascinating and is helped by the weight and strength of the original melody. Bonds also wrote some very impressive works for chorus, all of them influenced by the Black Christian religious experience in the Depression-era South.”