Andover Choral Society, Michael Driscoll, music director, is the winner of The American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music, 2020, in the community choral division. Andover Choral Society was selected for their performance of Florence Price’s Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight from applications reviewed recently from all across the United States.
The American Prize National Nonprofit Competitions in the Performing Arts is the nation’s most comprehensive series of nonprofit competitions in the musical and theater arts, unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings.
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Florence Price (1887-1953) was the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphony composer and to have a composition played by a major orchestra. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in an abandoned house on the outskirts of Chicago, Illinois. Among these works was Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, a 30-minute work for chorus, soloists and accompaniment, set to a poem by Vachel Lindsay. Price left two versions of this work: one for orchestra and organ and the other for piano. From Price’s unpublished manuscript, Driscoll prepared a new performing edition of the piano version for this performance. This recording is believed to be the first recording of this version of Price’s work.
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