Thursday, September 17, 2020

Santa Fe College: “Celebrating Music by Black Composers” will be streamed online at 7:30 p.m. Friday, September 18, 2020

H. Leslie Adams

Nkeiru Okoye


Santa Fe College, Florida

September 14, 2020 – “Celebrating Music by Black Composers” is the title that Santa Fe College Associate Professor of Music Mitch McKay chose for his fall concert, which will be streamed online at 7:30 p.m. Friday, September 18, 2020. McKay will record the music the week before the concert and then participate in a live question-and-answer session on Zoom following that streamed event. The concert is free and may be viewed on the Fine Arts Department’s page on the college’s website at sfcollege.edu/finearts.

“This concert will celebrate the talents of the many Black composers who have enriched the world of music and who deserve to be better known,” McKay explained. “During fall term, the Fine Arts department is focusing students on the problems caused by racism and how the arts can foster solutions to those problems by inspiring social change. I chose this program to complement that effort. The concert will include pieces by one of my favorite composers.”

The concert will feature works by H. Leslie Adams, Scott Joplin, Florence Price, R. Nathaniel Dett, Nkeiru Okoye, Christian Onyeji, Joshua Uzoigwe and William Grant Still.

Born in Ohio, H. Leslie Adams is a prolific composer who has written music in genres that include symphony, ballet, choral, vocal solo and keyboard. His works have been performed throughout the USA and internationally by artists from the Metropolitan Opera, Prague Radio Symphony and Iceland Symphony.

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Nkeiru Okoye is an American composer and musician many of whose works draw from American history. Her “Invitation to a Die-In” was commissioned in memory of Trayvon Martin and other young Black men who have lost their lives to violence.


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