https://www.musicbyblackcomposers.org/resources/living-composers-directory/
MBC’s Living Composers Directory includes information about each
composer including their name, geographic region, gender, birth year,
contact information and website link. Designed to be an ever-expanding
work in progress, the directory currently holds the names of 170 living
Black composers from North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe,
Africa, and Asia. The public is invited to notify the project of any
composer not currently on this list by emailing
editor@musicbyblackcomposers.org. Megan E. Hill, Ph.D., Managing Editor
for MBC, is an Adjunct Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of
Michigan.
“Composers of African descent have created masterful classical music for
centuries, yet they continue to be underrepresented in concert
programming and in classical music education. This absence silences a
rich vein of works from global consciousness and obscures the true face
of classical music,” says RBP Foundation President Rachel Barton Pine.
“Young musicians seldom have the opportunity to study and perform
classical music by Black composers. It’s a struggle for artists and
enthusiasts of color to participate in an art form in which they do not
appear to belong, perpetuating a lack of diversity on stage and among
audiences. This online directory is one of the ways the RBP Foundation
is working to spread awareness of and access to music by Black
composers,” she adds.
The RBP Foundation’s Music by Black Composers, in collaboration the
Orchestral Music by Black Composers (OMBC) project founded by
scholar-harpist Dr. Ashley Jackson and conductor James Blachly, is
working to complete an online database of all composers of African
descent, living and deceased. The database will feature information
about numerous individual works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles,
and orchestra, including instrumentation, length, descriptions,
difficulty level, where to find the music, links to recordings, and
programming suggestions.
In October 2018, MBC will take another monumental step toward showing
the world #BlackisClassical, with LudwigMasters’ publication of MBC
Violin Volume I, the first in a pedagogical series of books of music
exclusively by Black classical composers from around the world. Each
orchestral instrument will be the subject of multiple volumes, which
will be graded by difficulty from beginner to advanced concerto-level
playing and will include biographies for every composer, profiles of
Black classical music role models, and feature articles about Black
participation in classical music past and present.
Subsequent publications will include works for school orchestra and
chamber ensembles. In addition, MBC is also developing a coloring book
of the 40 most prominent Black composers throughout history as well as a
timeline poster featuring more than 300 Black composers.
The idea for MBC started with a recording Rachel Barton Pine made for
Cedille Records in 1997 titled Violin Concertos by Black Composers of
the 18th and 19th Centuries. The album contains historic compositions by
Afro-Caribbean and Afro-European composers from the Classical and
Romantic eras that had been unjustifiably neglected. Soon after its
release Pine found herself sitting on diversity panels and fielding
questions from students, parents, teachers, and colleagues about where
to find more works by Black composers. She quickly discovered that most
repertoire by Black composers is out of print or only exists in
manuscript. So, in 2001, her not-for-profit Rachel Barton Pine (RBP)
Foundation committed to the Music by Black Composers (MBC) project.
Over the past two decades, MBC has uncovered 900+ works by more than
300 Black composers from North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe,
Africa, and Asia, from the 18th to the 21st centuries.
Pine is an award-winning, chart-topping violinist, who performs with the
world's leading orchestras and has recorded 37 acclaimed albums. Her
performances are heard on NPR and stations around the globe and she has
appeared on The Today Show four times, CBS Sunday Morning, Bloomberg
Television, CNN, PBS NewsHour and has been featured in the Los Angeles
Times, New York Times and media outlets around the world. In addition to
the MBC project, her RBP Foundation assists young artists through its
Instrument Loan Program, Grants for Education and Career, and Global
HeartStrings which supports musicians in developing countries.
For more information, please visit RBPFoundation.org, MusicbyBlackComposers.org, and RachelBartonPine.com.
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