The San Diego Union-Tribune: Review: A refreshing La Jolla Symphony & Chorus program featuring Florence Price and Jennifer Higdon

 Sameer Patel conducted the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus.
(Courtesy photo Arielle Doneso)

The San Diego Union-Tribune

By Christian Hertzog Writer

 

April 25, 2022

The repertory of American orchestras is largely dedicated to music by dead, White, European males. Last weekend, the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus happily ignored that programming demographic.

Saturday at the Good Samaritan Episcopal Church, Sameer Patel conducted substantial works by two American women: Florence Price (dead but African American) and Jennifer Higdon (White but very much alive).

As recently as 14 years ago, Price’s music was neglected by everyone except scholars and performers specializing in African American music. The 2009 discovery of dozens of her unpublished manuscripts in a ramshackle Illinois house led to the most extraordinary revival of a composer’s music since the 1990s re-examination of Viktor Ullman, Pavel Haas or Erwin Schulhoff.

Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor was her first orchestral work. It won a composition contest, which led to a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.

Her accomplishment cannot be denied: it was the first symphony by an African American woman to be performed by a major orchestra. The pentatonic melodies and syncopated rhythms found within are some of the African influences that made the symphony a novel hybrid for its time.