The Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago, tweets:
Read this blog post about Ed Bland by Rahni Kennedy, then come check out the CBMR's collection of his work! http://htl.li/Zh0Ho
Blog of the Hamon Arts Library
Ed Bland
(Image Courtesy of Marry Batten)
Rahni Kennedy
Several years ago when I was
brainstorming for a doctoral performance project, I knew that I wanted
to deal with something that had to deal with African-American composers.
This was because through all my studies I found that black composers
were seldom represented in the classroom and on the performance stage.
After some initial research I came across the works of Ed Bland mostly
because it seemed he had many compositions for clarinet (my instrument).
After acquiring his album Urban Classical, I became fascinated by the music I was listening to and decided to focus my research on him.
The musical compositions of Ed Bland
provide great insight into the history of African-American composers in
the second half of the 20th century. With a formal career expanding
over a half-century, composing in both the traditional classical style
and commercial style, Ed Bland’s music synthesizes of wide variety of
stylistic elements which include Western influences, African-American
rooted genres (jazz, blues, and gospel), and West African drumming. This
adaptation of world music into classical composition exemplifies a
recent trend of American composers.
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