The Oberlin Review: Conservatory Creates African American Music Minor

 

The work of historically marginalized composers will gain more attention in the curriculum for the new African American music minor. In clockwise order from top left: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George; Jessie Montgomery; Roque Cordero; J. H. Kwabena Nketia; Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; and Florence Price.  Credit: Abe Frato

The Oberlin Review

Walter Thomas-Patterson, Conservatory Editor

February 25, 2022

The Conservatory has established an African American Music minor that will be available to students beginning in the 2022–23 academic year. The minor will be interdisciplinary in nature; courses will be offered within the Conservatory’s Jazz and Ethnomusicology departments and the College’s Africana Studies, Dance, and Theater departments, among numerous other cross-sectional courses available to students.

The introduction of the minor actualizes a broader curricular expansion toward historically marginalized musical fields, following the Conservatory’s Racial Equity and Diversity Action Plan released in September 2020. The Conservatory is restructuring the music theory curriculum to de-emphasize Western art-music as the sole theoretical canon and instead provide students with a greater array of forms to explore.

Along with this pedagogical shift, the Conservatory is hiring new faculty for positions in Jazz History, as well as in African American and African Diasporic Music, to help teach newly available courses in this minor.

Africana Studies Department Chair Charles Peterson, Conservatory Associate Dean Chris Jenkins, and a not-yet named professor in African American Music will collaborate as co-chairs of the minor. They will be responsible for approving students’ academic proposals.

Jenkins says that although new positions will be hired for the minor, the program will also draw on pre-existing academic infrastructure.

“The curricular elements of the minor have been around for a long time; we just needed to formalize them to articulate a single area of study,” Jenkins wrote in an email to the Review. “There is already a lot of interest at Oberlin in studying Black cultural topics, so expanding Conservatory offerings in this area seems like an obvious opportunity.”

The minor requires 20 credit hours for completion: 12 are obtained through required introductory courses, and eight are approved from a variety of courses, contingent on a student’s particular interests in fields ranging from theatrical performance to gospel singing.

John Malveaux: ROY HARRIS-LIBRARY of CONGRESS

I Hear America Singing!

Choral

Music of

Roy Harris

The Roberts

Wesleyan

College

Chorale

Robert

Shewan,

conductor

Albany Records

John Malveaux of MusicUNTOLD.com writes:

American composer Roy Harris' last completed symphony, "Bicentennial Symphony" (13th), premiered February 10, 11, 12 at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Murry Sidlin to celebrate the 200th birthday of our nation. Original text in the choral symphony, "stand firm against the White Man's shame, they buy slave's blood in freedom's name" along with performance and promotional rights granted to John Malveaux by Johana Harris (wife of Roy Harris) are suspected reasons every major symphony orchestra in the United States has refused to perform the symphony in over 44 years. The controversial original text has been taken out of the full context of the choral symphony. The choral symphony was a celebration of American history NOT a condemnation or indictment of American history. 

In 2009, the Long Beach Central Area Association and City of Long Beach Parks Recreation & Marine presented a non-union/amateur performance of the "Bicentennial Symphony" at MLK Jr Park to celebrate the 200th birth of Abraham Lincoln during their annual Juneteenth Celebration and prevent non-existence of the "Bicentennial Symphony" after absence of major media coverage and public awareness. The amateur performance is the only known audio /video recording of the "Bicentennial Symphony". On August 11, 2022, the Long Beach Central Area Association will debut the MusicUNTOLD Orchestra (union contracted) to perform the 1st professional performance of the "Bicentennial Symphony" in Los Angeles since the 1976 premiere to include Maestro Murry Sidlin and the Los Angeles Master Chorale (conductor Jenny Wong) singing the chorus.

The Long Beach Central Area Association will donate the audio/video performances of the 2009 amateur performance in Long Beach and the August 11, 2022 Los Angeles premiere to the Roy Harris archive in the Library of Congress along with related materials for posterity. See https://www.loc.gov/item/2010562511/

SFCV.org: Bill Doggett: William Grant Still and His Times: Contradictions in Black, Brown and Beige

William Grant Still (1895-1978) 

William Grant Still and His Times: Contradictions in Black, Brown and Beige

Bill Doggett on February 16, 2022

San Francisco Classical Voice

As an African American male with classical music ambitions confronted by a debilitating structural racial animus, his legacy is a statement of an extraordinary transformative resilience. In our changed world, impacted by the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and extremes of cultural-political divisions, the music of William Grant Still has found a permanence of acceptance and an organic sense of being not thought possible at the time of his birth.

As we celebrate Black History Month 2022 in concert halls nationwide, it is the music of William Grant Still which continues to center us in an appreciation of ideas about a Black lived experience.  

William Grant Still

Still’s legacy of a transformative resilience has acted as the bridge that connects us to an appreciation of an historical past and future about ideas of a Black cultural aesthetic in classical music. Importantly, it is also the bridge that has broken glass ceilings in the concert hall for Black composers, musicians, and conductors

The Jim Crow South of William Grant Still’s childhood was by design a restrictive state, a holding camp for maligned and displaced migrants whose plight overwhelmed a still-divided Union dawning into a new century, but yet still consumed by antebellum dissonances over structural racial hierarchy.

Still was one year old when Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision reinstitutionalized a structural white supremacy dismantled by the social utopianism of the assassinated President Lincoln with a re-enslavement through “separate-but-equal” segregation. Separate-but-equal mirrored, with its restrictive Black Codes, the convulsive repression of the 1830’s slave revolts.

From the author's collection  | 
Credit: Bill Doggett Race and Performing Arts Archive

The cultural and entertainment backdrop at the turn of the century found a White America infatuated with its antebellum era characterization of Blacks as comic yet conniving Jim Crows, uppity Zip Coons, neutered Mammies, and loyal Old Black Joes of minstrel shows.

This damning social and cultural narrative of Black inconsequentiality found push back in 1903 with the emergence of the black scholar and political progressive, W.E.B. Du Bois and his landmark book, The Souls of Black Folk, one of the first and most important investigations into the socioeconomic and psychological effects of racism. With this book, Du Bois established the critical paradigm of double consciousness, the individual and collective psychological dissonance that arises from perceiving oneself as “Negro” and as “American,” and recognizing that to be “Negro” is to be a foreigner and reviled as inferior by the larger society.

From the author's collection  | 

Credit: Bill Doggett Race and Performing Arts Archive 

At the time of William Grant Still’s infancy, the vast repertoire and popularity of derogatory “coon songs” celebrated in blackface minstrel shows emphatically underscored the reality of Du Bois’ double consciousness paradigm in their irrefutable definition of “blackness” as incompatible with social parity and integration. However, a culturally significant and aspiring Black middle class, into which Still was born, resisted these demeaning stereotypes.

He was the son of two respected educators at Alabama A&M College. The death of Still’s father, when the child was three months old, and his mother’s remarriage to a Black man who was steeped in the love of music, and opera in particular, brought the boy into contact with a staple necessity of middle-class life. For their Victrola phonograph, Still’s stepfather purchased many operatic 78s and took the young Still to concerts. Still’s grandmother anchored his appreciation of the music of his people, Negro spirituals, which she sang to him. The world of the adolescent Still was a world that dreamed of uplift and found purpose in music. 

During the first five years of Still’s life, lynching, a form of white supremacist racial control and terror instituted by Southern white men enraged at the Lincolnian idea of Black freedom, reached a crescendo. At the time, the idea of “racial uplift” embraced by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B Wells, and Carter G. Woodson seemed incompatible with reality. Yet it is the paradigm of racial uplift that would become transformational in the life of William Grant Still.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Racial uplift was an ideology for racial transfiguration advocated by Du Bois and “The Talented Tenth” with the organizing principle that the Black people would be best led forward by an elite group of upper class, well-educated Black men and women already more closely assimilated to white American cultural and business norms.

The Talented Tenth idea advocated that the way forward for African Americans faced with the extraordinary racial animus of the Jim Crow South was to prove themselves, in the arts and professional fields, to be as accomplished and successful as their white counterparts.

Black excellence in these metrics would, in this ideological viewpoint, prove to white America that Blacks deserved greater respect and were interested in assimilation and integration into the larger social cultural and political American fabric.

Racial uplift through the classical performing arts, for African Americans of 1900–1918, was defined by artistic excellence in music as instrumentalists, singers, composers, educators, and artistic administrators.

William Grant Still (R) with his string quartet at Wilberforce | 

Courtesy of Georgetown University

The young Still learned to play the violin, cello, clarinet, and oboe. Encouraged by his mother, Still’s higher educational pursuits led him to Wilberforce University, when he was 16 years old. While at Wilberforce for a medical degree he quickly abandoned, he became proficient as a performer. He was a violinist in the Wilberforce University String Quartet and also performed in and wrote arrangements for the school band. He left Wilberforce in 1915 before graduating, taking odd musical jobs, and spending summer 1916 playing and arranging in W.C. Handy’s bands. A legacy gift from his father allowed him to matriculate at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in early 1917, where he studied composition with George Andrews. World War I interrupted his studies, when he decided to join the Navy. Between 1917–1918, in an American military segregated in duties by race, Still’s proficiency as a concert violinist elevated his status as an enlisted Negro to playing dinner music for white officers

After the war, Still moved to New York City in 1919 where he wrote to W.C. Handy for work and began a notable association with him. 

From 1919 to early 1921, Still created important arrangements of Handy works, including the first orchestra arrangements of the landmark “St. Louis Blues” and “Beale Street Blues.” An artistic manager for the Handy Band, Still also worked at W.C. Handy’s music publishing company, Pace and Handy Music, the nation’s signature Black Tin Pan Alley music publishing business.

From the author's collection  | 

Credit: Bill Doggett Race and Performing Arts Archive

Leveraging his Black jazz world connections during the nascent Harlem Renaissance of 1920-21, Still’s talents as an arranger and instrumentalist came to the attention of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle who were writing the score of the epochal 1921 musical, Shuffle Along, the first Broadway show in over a decade to be written, produced, and performed entirely by Black talent. Still provided uncredited arrangements and also played oboe in the show’s pit orchestra.

While performing in Shuffle Along, during its Boston tryout, Still studied composition for four months with George Whitfield Chadwick, who was director of the New England Conservatory. (He also studied for two years, 1923-25, with French avant garde composer Edgard Varese.)

Still left Pace and Handy Music in spring 1921 and followed its senior partner, Harry Pace, to assist in the creation and founding of Black Swan Records, a black record company created for the documentation of black artistic talent emerging out of the shadows of The Great Migration and the First World War.  

In Harry Pace, Still was associating with a brilliant businessman, a quintessential leader of the the Talented Tenth, and a close friend of Du Bois.  

Harry Pace with Black Swan record labels | 

Credit: Bill Doggett Race and Performing Arts Archive

Link to complete article in San Francisco Classical Voice:

https://www.sfcv.org/articles/feature/william-grant-still-and-his-times-contradictions-black-brown-and-beige

 

BroadwayWorld.com: Feb. 9 & 11, 2023 "A Celebration of Black Composers" James Lee III, William Grant Still, Adolphus Hailstork, Nkeiru Okoye & Duke Ellington

James Lee III

Broadway World

Rochester Philharmonic Announces 2022-23 Season

by Stephi Wild 

Feb. 24, 2022

A Celebration of Black Composers

RPO Co-Commission by James Lee III, February 9 & 11

In February, the RPO presents a special concert to celebrate the rich history of Black Rochesterians. The concert features James Lee III's "Freedom's Genuine Dawn" (an RPO co-commission) and William Grant Still's Afro-American Symphony, which was premiered in Rochester by the RPO in 1931. Also on the program are An American Fanfare by Adolphus Hailstork, who was born in Rochester; the orchestral song cycle Songs of Harriet Tubman by Nkeiru Okoye; and Duke Ellington's The River Suite. Internationally acclaimed Rochester-based soprano Kearstin Piper Brown and dancer, educator, activist, and director of dance at RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf Thomas Warfield join the RPO for this program.

Indiana University: Black cast and director bring revered Black composer's opera to life [William Grant Still's "Highway 1, USA"]

 Chase Sanders and Maisah Outlaw perform 

as Mary and Aunt Lou in "Highway 1, USA." 

Photo by Sarah Slover, Jacobs School of Music

Indiana University

Jacobs School of Music

By Julia Hodson

Feb. 24, 2022

Composer William Grant Still once said, "I don't think that it is good for the world of music to have everything come out of the same mold. God didn't place only roses on earth, or only lilies or only violets. He put flowers of many sorts and many colors here, the beauty of each enhancing that of the others."

Still may not be as well-known outside the music world as other American composers like George Gershwin or Leonard Bernstein, but his talent was on the same level. Known as the "the dean of African American composers," Still was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, rubbing elbows with the likes of Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington. With a career spanning four decades, he composed more than 150 works, including nine operas, five symphonies and four ballets, which often told stories of the African American experience.

Earlier in February, the Jacobs School of Music paid tribute to this visionary composer with a production of "Highway 1, USA," an opera created by Still. Performed by a primarily Black cast and directed by Kimille Howard, assistant stage director with the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the three-act opera was preceded by "19," a ballet set to music from Still's "Afro-American Symphony" and choreographed by Sasha Janes, associate professor of music (ballet) at Jacobs.

Still was the first Black composer to conduct his own work as it was performed by a major American orchestra. Though highly accomplished, his career did not come without the hurdles of racism. He composed music for the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, which he could only attend safely with the help of a police escort except on "Negro Day." He also composed music for many motion pictures in Hollywood, but he resigned before finishing the score for the 1943 film "Stormy Weather," in protest of 20th Century Fox degrading people of color.

The opportunity to commemorate Still's work while collaborating with other Black performers created a sense of comfort for the students involved in the Jacobs School production, according to mezzo-soprano Maisah Outlaw, who played the role of Aunt Lou.

"America is a melting pot, and I love being around lots of various cultures," Outlaw said. "We don't only want to get the perspective of what we know, but there is something really cool about being in a group of people that have the same cultural experiences as you. It can be really enriching and nice to have that feeling of comfort."

Outlaw, a first-generation college student, has an undergraduate degree in journalism and French and never studied music formally before coming to Indiana University. She worked as a Montessori teacher in Minneapolis during the summer of 2020 when George Floyd was killed by a police officer, an event that set off a domino effect of protests as people called for change across the country. That summer, Outlaw said, she began to think about a dream of hers that she had not felt was possible before.

"I always had this passion for music that I never felt like I could pursue, being a first-generation college student," said Outlaw, who is now pursuing her graduate degree at the Jacobs School. "So many people, both people of color as well as people without means in general, look at opera as an inaccessible world. I had never sung opera before, but I knew I had the voice, so I doubled up on voice coaches and applied to some grad programs. If I decide to do something, I really do it."

When she was accepted to the Jacobs School, her dreams to pursue music were finally within reach. Outlaw said she was drawn to IU by the number of opportunities to perform and gain stage experience.

"Part of my artist's mission, which I'm still finalizing, is to increase the accessibility of opera," Outlaw said. "Representation is a part of that. If it feels accessible, people will feel empowered to start a career in the arts."

Outlaw said "Highway 1, USA" was a fitting opera for her first stage role at Jacobs because it feels accessible and relatable. Still wrote the opera about Black American characters. It is sung in English, and the characters deal with real-world issues of family, love and marriage.

Love was an important theme in Still's life. In 1939, he went to great lengths to marry his second wife, pianist Verna Arvey. She was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. Since interracial marriages were still illegal in California, the couple traveled across the border to Tijuana to marry. They later collaborated on "Highway 1, USA," with Still creating the composition and Arvey the libretto. At the story's center is the strong, loving bond between the main characters, Bob and Mary.

Baritone Marvin Wayne Allen played the role of Bob. Allen grew up in a musical family. His first love was pop and R&B, and he became interested in singing classical music while working with a vocal coach in high school. He eventually studied in Austria for a summer, where he attended the Salzburg Festival and saw several inspiring opera performances. Now a graduate student at Jacobs, Allen said this production, coupled with the support he feels from his school, has helped him grow as an artist.

"I'm really happy with my choice to come to IU," said Allen, who is pursuing his master's in music: voice and opera. "My teacher that I study with is a Black man, which I find to be very validating. I feel very seen by him, and I feel like that's something that IU gave me.

"Pieces by Black composers typically aren't in the canon of classics that are performed over and over again. I think it's important to normalize the fact that there are Black composers, not just now but also from many years ago, whose works deserve to be showcased in the same way that we showcase the Mozarts and the Beethovens. That's one of the reasons why I find a lot of personal fulfillment in doing an opera by William Grant Still."

Black composers have been historically marginalized in America's major opera houses. Since 1883, when the Metropolitan Opera House opened in New York City, only one opera from a Black composer had been staged. But after that oversight garnered attention during the summer of 2020, "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" by composer Terence Blanchard kicked off the 2021-22 opera season. Based on New York Times columnist Charles Blow's memoir, the opera sold out.

The world of opera has also been criticized for its lack of Black directors, stage managers and other upper-level roles. "Porgy and Bess," an opera composed by Gershwin, was recently staged at the Met with a nearly all-Black cast. However, the director and conductor were white.

In their search for someone to direct "Highway 1, USA," Jacobs reached out to Kimille Howard. Originally from Carmel, Indiana, Howard has forged a successful career as a director, writer and filmmaker. In addition to being assistant stage director at the Met, she is the artistic director for the Lucille Lortel Theatre's New York City Public High School Playwriting Fellowship and a co-founder of the Black Classical Music Archive. She said she understands firsthand the importance of representation on stage and off.

TheGuardian.com: Passion, power and the parting of the Red Sea: Dett’s The Ordering of Moses

Rodrick Dixon

(Photo by Kristie Kahns)

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943)

(Library of Congress)

The Guardian

Rodrick Dixon

Tue 22 Feb, 2022

 

Robert Nathaniel Dett’s sweeping oratorio had its first broadcast cut short and has barely been heard in the eight decades since. Ahead of its UK premiere, tenor Rodrick Dixon explains its importance, and how the composer’s grandmother played a part

Eight years ago this May, I was standing on stage at Carnegie Hall watching the audience waving green festival banners. The air was filled with nervous anticipation. The occasion was the New York premiere of The Ordering of Moses, an oratorio composed in 1932 by Robert Nathaniel Dett.

As a Black artist about to deliver the role of Moses in the Big Apple, I felt full of emotion. I was about to help free a piece that had experienced decades of bondage because of the race of its composer. Once the lights dimmed and the hall grew silent, maestro James Conlon signalled the bassoon to begin playing a slow, mysterious melody. Brass responded with shimmering bluesy chords. It wasn’t long before one of the most famous spirituals filled the hall. “Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land. Tell Pharoah, ‘Let my people go!’”

Dett, the Black Canadian-American composer, pianist and poet had finally arrived in New York, 71 years after his death aged 60. His oratorio depicts biblical scenes of the enslaved Israelites, Moses being called by God to lead them out of bondage, the parting of the Red Sea, the Egyptian pursuit and the Israelites rejoicing in their freedom. Dett had said that he wanted to create something for African Americans that would be “musically peculiarly their own and yet which would bear comparison with the nationalistic utterances of other people’s work in art form”.

His music was unapologetically African American, yet universally “classical”. You can hear influences of the likes of African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Nadia Boulanger – with whom he studied in Paris at the American Conservatory (where I myself also studied decades later) – and Antonín Dvořák, particularly the Czech composer’s “American” quartet, Op 96. Its use of Negro spirituals reminded Dett of his grandmother’s singing, which inspired him to use the spirituals – born in America from the legacy of slavery – as thematic material and folk idioms in his compositions for the rest of his life.

Dett wrote The Ordering of Moses for his graduation thesis at the Eastman School of Music in 1932; but it remained unperformed until 1937. The work was premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at the Cincinnati May festival and the performance was broadcast live across the US on NBC radio. And yet the network inexplicably stopped the broadcast suddenly three-quarters of the way through, claiming a scheduling conflict.

Luke Welch: Cool Hand Adventures Podcast (Episode 4): Black to the Future

Luke Welch

Luke Welch writes:

Dear Bill,

I hope all is well with you and that you have been keeping safe.  I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to my new podcast Cool Hand Adventures - a classical music series unlike any other which discusses a range of topics from social issues to performance practices, sensitive encounters, and beyond.  This series is meant to shine a light on a wide range of discussions which are, or should be, very important for all of us to consider – hopefully even resulting in positive changes for the future.

Episode 4, Black to the Future, may be of particular interest to you, as we celebrate Black History Month.  Highlighting notable Afri-classical musicians of the past and present, this episode takes a deep-dive into both "should-be" household names as well as other notable figures who have made significant contributions and respective impacts on the classical music industry through their performances, compositions, transcriptions, arrangements, teachings, leadership, and musical inspiration.

This podcast is available through Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/episode/3g2pho9i3URdbwQlxXeJtQ), Anchor.fm (https://anchor.fm/luke-welch4/episodes/Cool-Hand-Adventures-Episode-4-Black-to-the-Future-e1elqcp), and Apple Podcasts.

As always, I wish you all the very best and continued success.

Sincerely,

  

Luke Welch

--

www.lukewelch.ca

Broadcast No. 482 for The Grand@101 on February 27/2022 Black History Month - Sunday from 10.00 pm ET

Broadcast No. 482 for The Grand@101 on February 27/2022

Black History Month   Sunday from 10.00 pm ET

Broadcast and Livestream from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Grand 101.1 FM

https://thegrand101.com

(Livestream)

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra:    Pieta.            Ulysses Kay.   8.20

Conductor. JoAnn Falletta.

Fort Smith Symphony:             Symphony No. 4   William Grant Still.  26.15

Conductor.  John Jeter.

                                                      BREAK

Steven Beck:  Piano                Sonata No. 1   George Walker   14.25

Jeremy Huw Williams:  Baritone.       The Souls Expression.   Eleanor Alberga.  19.25

Paula Fan:   Piano.

Debra Reter-Pivetta:  Flute                American Suite        Undine Smith Moore.  11.40

Bonnie Thron:   Cello

Thomas Warburton:  Piano

                                                        BREAK.

Marie- Josee Lord. Soprano.            Summertime.               Gershwin.3.15.  Can/Con

Orchestra Metropolitain                    My Man's gone Now.   Gershwin.   4.05.  Can/Con

Conductor Giuseppe Pietraroia.

Steven Beck:  Piano                  Piano Sonats No. 5     Walker.    4.50

Marie-Josee Lord:                   Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray.     Trad.  3.50.     Can/Con

Ensemble Vocal Epiphanie    He's Got The Whole World in His Hands.  Trad 3.10.  Can/Con

The Harlem Chamber Players: Black History Month Events: We hope you will join us for a FREE Black History Month Concert in Brooklyn Feb. 27 at 4 PM

We hope you will join us for a FREE Concert Sunday in Brooklyn!

Please note that you must show proof of vaccination in order to attend any indoor concerts. Masks and social distancing are also required. Click here for more information on Covid protocols at Brooklyn Public Library. This concert is presented by the Brooklyn Public Library as part of its Classical Interludes series and in association with American Opera Project. Brooklyn Public Library - Central Library 10 Grand Army Plaza Brooklyn, NY, 11238 (map) PROGRAM William Grant Still Lyric Quartette Nkeiru Okoye Three Movements for String Quartet Nkeiru Okoye We Met at the Symphony (1st movement) for Soprano and String Quartet* (Brooklyn Premiere) Jessie Montgomery Strum Antonín Dvořák String Quartet No. 11 in C Major, Op. 61, B 121 FEATURING Leah Hawkins, Soprano Ashley Horne, Violin Claire Chan, Violin William Frampton, Viola Wayne Smith, Cello TICKETS This concert is free and open to the public. RSVP is required. Please click here to RSVP.

Black History Month 2022 Celebrating Black Composers Each year, with generous support from Con Edison, The Town Hall celebrates Black History Month with performances, educational resources, and a contest for New York City public school students. While we cannot gather in person this year, The Town Hall Foundation is delivering, for FREE, direct to educators: An engaging performance video featuring members of The Harlem Chamber Players performing the works of Black composers, hosted by WQXR’s Terrance McKnight. An accompanying digital study guide A TikTok video by the “Gen Z Historian” Kahlil Greene to open the conversation in classrooms about the barriers Black people face in spaces rooted in European culture, yet how we have managed to thrive A contest with CASH prizes for students engaged with this curriculum (enter by March 31st) Click here to learn more and to RSVP to receive materials! We thank all of you who have supported us. If you haven't already, we hope you will support our 2021-22 Season!

BuffaloRising.com: Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra performs works of Adolphus Hailstork, William Grant Still, Margaret Bonds and Ulysses Kay Feb. 25 & 27

Adolphus Hailstork

William Grant Still (1895-1978)

Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)

Ulysses Kay (1917-1995)

Buffalo Rising

Peter Hall

February 19, 2022

Assistant BPO conductor Jaman E. Dunn conducts SPOTLIGHT ON BLACK COMPOSERS featuring soprano Sirgourney Cook and several BPO musician soloists in music by Adolphus Hailstork, William Grant Still, Margaret bonds, and Ulysses Kay.  Not at Kleinhans, but at Rockwell Hall on the Buff State Campus, presented by Buffalo Opera Unlimited, the two programs are next weekend, Friday February 25 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, February 27 at 2:30pm.  

Performing Arts Center

Buffalo State

"Don't miss this opportunity to experience the distinctive music of William Grant Still (Grief (Weeping Angel), Golden Days from Costaso, Mother and Child, Ennanga, Poem for Orchestra, and Sahdji, (a work for singers, dancers and orchestra), Margaret Bonds (The Negro Speaks of Rivers), Ulysses Kay (Pieta) and Adolphus Hailstork (Symphony No. 2). This performance will include singers, dancers and instrumentalists, conducted by Jaman Dunn."

Arts Engines: Aaron Dworkin Interviews Harold Brown, Chief Diversity Officer of Cincinnati Symphony!

Welcome to this week's episode of Arts Engines which now reaches over 100,000 weekly viewers in partnership with Detroit Public Television, Ovation TV, The Violin Channel and American Public Media including Performance Today and YourClassical. Arts Engines seeks to share the most valuable advice and input from arts administrators who tell their stories of creative problem-solving, policy, economic impact, crisis management and empowering the future of our field.

This week's show is co-curated by our Creative Partner, the Cincinnati Symphony and our guest is Harold Brown, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer of the Cincinnati Symphony, as he discusses the role of Chief Diversity Officer in an orchestra.  Enjoy... and have a creative week!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB6Z3cJRni4

HEOG: Unbound Genius: Black Composers and Performers and the Great Migration: Speaker: Rosalyn Story Feb. 26, 2022, 3-4:30 PM Online Event

After the Civil War and World War I, many Black   

classical artists—Sissieretta Jones, William Grant

Still, Florence Price, Roland Hayes, William

Dawson, and others—journeyed from Jim Crow

America to the North to explore and expand their

musical talent. The path of these great artists was

fraught with obstacles that proved no match for

their genius. Within the socio-political context

of a rapidly changing America, Rosalyn Story

will discuss how these artists endured setbacks

of racism, poverty, and gender discrimination

to navigate a complex cultural landscape, and

change the face of American classical music. The

Robert A. Henry Lecture is Houston Ebony Opera

Guild’s annual tribute to its founder, Dr. Robert

Alphonso Henry (1916-1996), a distinguished

music educator, choral conductor, and voice

teacher for whom opera and the Negro Spiritual

were great passions.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED AT
www.houstonlibrary.org
REGISTRATION LINK:
https://houstonlibrary.libcal.com/event/8724636
This is an online event.
A link will be emailed to registrants.
Please contact Friends of HEOG at
713-335-3800 for additional information