Florence B. Price
New York State
Friday, February 2, 2018
The Musicians of Ma'alwyck and the Capital Trio are joining forces for a program that's being performed twice this week, Wednesday at the University at Albany, and Friday at Schenectady County Community College. The major work on the program, titled Sweet Power, is Dvorak's lyric Piano Quintet. In an intriguing nod to Black History Month, the concert opens with Florence Price's Five Folksongs in Counterpoint.
Price was a respected and productive composer whose music has been mostly overlooked. Born in 1887 in Little Rock, she trained in Boston and spent the last decades of her life in Chicago.
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As for Price's work, the folk songs should be easily recognized: "Calvary," "Clementine," "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," "Shortnin' Bread" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
"The pieces are not mere restatements or instrumental
arrangements of the songs. They are much more developed, unique and
artistic than that," says Barker Schwartz. "The writing is complex and
thick and contrapuntally sophisticated within a 20th-century idiom,
incorporating many jazzy elements while adhering to the rules of
counterpoint. Every time that we rehearse, I hear something new and
surprising and delightful or satisfying."
I really like Price's Folk Songs in Counterpoint. They are complex in a good way and very exciting.
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