The Great Hall of Cooper Union
Florence Beatrice Smith Price (1887-1953) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a comprehensive Works Lists by Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma, http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.
which features a comprehensive Works List and a
Bibliography
by Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma,
by Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma,
John McLaughlin Williams
(The Dream Unfinished)
(The Dream Unfinished)
Terrance McKnight
(Marco Antonio)
(Marco Antonio)
Kelly Hall-Tompkins
(Brooklyn Public Library)
Marlissa Hudson
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
July 20, 2016
By Liane Curtis
The Dream Unfinished Orchestra gave an orchestral and choral concert at the Great Hall of Cooper Union
[in New York City] last Wednesday. The musical tribute to black women
harmed by racial injustice, female activists, and organizers of the
historic Civil Rights and #BlackLivesMatter movement commemorated the
one-year anniversary of the death of Sandra Bland.
A complex event, with orchestra, chorus, soloists, and including
music by four composers, in addition to presentations or commentary by
ten speakers, “Sing Her Name” constituted a powerful tribute to Sandra
Bland and dozens of other female victims of racial violence. It also
offered vivid testimony to music’s ability to bring communities together
in healing. Such healing was greatly needed, in light of all the tragic
events of the recent weeks.
The concert featured music by Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Margaret Bonds
(1913-1972), Florence Price (1887-1953) and contemporary composer Courtney Bryan.
The historic Great Hall was filled to near capacity (1000). Of this
profound and satisfying event, much remained very vividly etched in my
memory. First was the opportunity to hear orchestral works by Florence
Price performed live, a first for me. I have two very treasured
recordings of Price’s symphonic music, including her Symphony No. 3, two
movements of which, “Juba: Allegro” and “Scherzo: Finale” were included
in the concert. Price is known as the first African American woman to
have a symphony performed by a major professional orchestra—her first,
in E Minor by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. Other noted
successes followed.
I serve with pride as President of Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, a
non-profit organization devoted to continuing the legacy of The Women’s
Philharmonic (the first orchestra to record Price’s music, in 2001, on a
disc including Symphony No. 3 (1940), and tone poems The Oak and Mississippi River Suite available here).
WPA also gave a Performance Grant to “The Dream Unfinished Concert” so
our logo was included in the printed program, etc. So I certainly am not
offering a dispasionate review, as one should not expect anyway in the
case of a benefit concert. The ticket income was in support of these
organizations: Center for Constitutional Rights, African American Policy
Forum, and Black Women’s Blueprint.
John McLaughlin Williams
led the orchestra in a highly energized reading of Price’s “Juba:
Allegro” (the title referring to a dance of West African origin), with
suppleness in the tempos, and an accelerando in the recall of the “A”
section, and crisp articulation all around resulting in breathtaking
exhilaration. This continued in the frenzy of the Scherzo, and the
rousing conclusion brought the concert to a suitably uplifting end. With
a compositional idiom that draws on African-American idioms, including
Jazz, I was left pondering why Price’s name is not name as familiar to
audiences as that of George Gershwin? The sad fact is that much of her
music was lost after her death, and the re-discovery is ongoing. The
newly discovered Price works that were premiered in January 2015 is
discussed here).
Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement is more conservative; its
harmonies, structure and pianistic gestures come clearly rooted in
romantic and post-romantic European vocabularies, but its melodic idioms
sound steeped in Negro spirituals. Michelle Cann, as the piano soloist,
was a compelling, sparkling virtuoso, bringing this riveting work to
life in its first New York performance. While the Concerto was performed
frequently in Chicago after it was premiered in 1934, no full score or
orchestral parts survived, only several piano scores. Composer Trevor
Weston was commissioned by the Center for Black Music Research to
re-orchestrate the work, and that version was premiered in 2011, and
recorded (on the Albany label, also available on Spotify). Weston spoke
of the experience of this orchestration process, observing “What if you
had all the dialogue to a play by August Wilson. And you had the list of
all the characters. But it was left to you to figure out which
character said what!”
Hearing the brilliance of Price’s music, brought to my mind the fact
that the slogan “Black Lives Matter” is as important in the area of
classical music composition as well as elsewhere; unfortunately, the
programming of most symphony orchestras would lead to the opposite
conclusion.
The two songs by Margaret Bonds, a Chicago-born composer who had
studied with Price, and became personally very close to her came, also
made an impact. We heard “Troubled Water,” Bonds’ arrangement of the
spiritual “Wade in the Water,” in a version for chorus and piano. One of
Bonds most successful of her many spiritual arrangements, she made
several versions of it; this one was by Rob Miller. The Dream Unfinished
Chorus drew members for four New York choirs for its polished and
captivating interpretation.
Bonds’s other piece, “To A Brown Girl Dead,” set a text by the Harlem
Renaissance poet Countee Cullen; this was arranged for orchestra by
Courtney Bryan, the young African American composer whose commissioned
work was the musical centerpiece of the second half of the program.
Soprano Marlissa Hudson conveyed deep emotion with a subtle restraint in
this short, poignant setting. The subject of the poem might have been
so many of the women, victims of violence, who we mourned together that
night.
Terrance McKnight, a host on WQXR radio, made a sensitive and
eloquent moderator. The Dream Unfinished founder Eun Lee offered some
fiery remarks. Scholar Ashley Jackson shared her rich insights on
Margaret Bonds. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a noted law professor and co-founder
of the African American Policy Forum, drew us into a moving remembrance
of the dozens of African American women—ranging from a girl of seven to a
93-year-old—who have been killed by police in recent years. She invited
us to stand and call out the names of the deceased women—we had each
been given an image of one, labelled with her name—to the counterpoint
of evocative singing improvised by a female vocalist. I did not catch
the singer’s name (she was not named in the program), but she was truly a
sensitive artist, creating a blues-inspired keening for the victims.
This process brought together the audience as part of a musical work,
bringing the names of the victims (and their faces, as audience members
held up the images) into living memory and as individuals into our
feelings of concern and compassion.
Retweeted
By Hannah Adair Bonner (@HannahABonner)
Retweeted
By Hannah Adair Bonner (@HannahABonner)
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