Annamarie Ewing of BlackClassics writes:
Dear Friends
Thought you'd like to know
that this week's Composer of the Week is William Grant Still. Although
this comes 5 years after the public were invited to suggest composers
for the show, better late than never!
Annamarie
BBC Sounds
Donald Macleod explores the life and music of African-American composer
William Grant Still. Today, Still’s early years, including his
transformative period of study with Edgard Varèse.
William Grant Still never really knew his father; William Grant Snr
died, in mysterious circumstances, when his son was just three months
old. Still’s mother, Carrie, a high-school English teacher, seems to
have responded by redoubling her efforts to be a good parent: as Still
recalled later, “She constantly impressed me with the thought that I
should achieve something worthwhile in life”. His school career went
well, but by the time he moved on to college, his interest in music had
become all-consuming. He struggled to make his grades and dropped out to
become a jobbing musician, playing with and making arrangements for the
man who would become known as the ‘Father of the Blues’, W C Handy. At
21, Still married, to a fellow college-student called Grace Bundy. It
was evidently an explosive relationship, and after a few months she
moved back in with her parents. Still used part of an inheritance from
his father to enrol at Oberlin College to study music. World War I
intervened, after which he gravitated to New York, where he eventually
found himself working as a staff composer and arranger for the Pace
Phonograph Company – which is how he came to meet Edgard Varèse, the
groundbreaking modernist composer who soon become Still's mentor.
Brown Baby (extract)
Ethel Waters and The Jazz Masters
Darker America
Westchester Symphony Orchestra
Siegfried Landau, conductor
Breath of a Rose
Louise Toppin, soprano
Vivian Taylor, piano
La Guiablesse (The She-Devil), ballet
Berlin Symphony Orchestra
Isaiah Jackson, conductor
Africa, suite for orchestra (1. Land of Peace)
Fort Smith Symphony
John Jeter, conductor
Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales
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