George Walker (b. 1922)
has a website at http://georgetwalker.com/
and is featured at
AfriClassical.com
The Montclair Times
May 19, 2015
Excerpt
The Hall of Fame now has its 2015 round of nominees.
They include George Walker of Montclair, who is among our nation's esteemed modern classical composers.
Studious artistry
In his education and his career, and through his intellect,
artistry, and fortitude, Walker has vanquished and destroyed racial
barriers. He was the first black composer to win a Pulitzer Prize in
Music, awarded for his symphonic work "Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra."
Graduating from high school in Washington, D.C., at age 14, George
Walker at that age performed his first public piano recital at Howard
University. At 18, he graduated from Oberlin College and went on to
become the first black student to graduate from the Curtis Institute of
Music.
Walker was the first black student to enroll in the doctoral
program in the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, N.Y. One could
make an empirical link between "Lilacs" and his studies in the Eastman
School. Rochester hosts an annual Lilac Festival at its Highland Park.
In writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning work, however, Walker cited
the Walt Whitman poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," an
elegy to President Abraham Lincoln. Whitman, by the way, is a 2009 Hall
of Fame inductee.
A prolific composer, Walker for many years was chair of the
Rutgers University-Newark Music Department. Three years ago, the New
Jersey Symphony Orchestra, which has its roots in Montclair,
commissioned his Sinfonia No. 4, which premiered in the New Jersey
Performing Arts Center in Newark.
Without question, George Theophilus Walker's musical presence as a
classical composer and pianist and his personal breakthroughs warrant
his induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
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