June 3 release - Florence Price piano music: "Scenes in Tin Can Alley" on Blue Griffin Records by Josh Tatsuo Cullen, Pianist

SCENES IN TIN CAN ALLEY

PIANO MUSIC OF FLORENCE PRICE

JOSH TATSUO CULLEN

New! Pianist Josh Tatsuo Cullen performs music by Florence Price

 

“Scenes in Tin Can Alley” released June 3, 2022 on Blue Griffin Records

“Cullen performed with an astounding mixture of coolness and intensity… with an unfailing sense of rhythm and drive” — Stuttgarter Zeitung

The music of Florence Price (1887 – 1953) is enjoying a renaissance. The 2009 discovery of a trove of manuscripts in the African-American composer’s abandoned summer home generated a lot of excitement and renewed interest in her life and work. The pianist Josh Tatsuo Cullen has recorded an entire album of her evocatively-titled music for solo piano, all specifically from that 2009 discovery. "Scenes in Tin Can Alley: Piano Music of Florence Price" (Blue Griffin BGR615) is released on June 3, 2022. The album includes the first commercial recording of several of these compositions, including Scenes in Tin Can Alley, Thumbnail Sketches of a Day in the Life of a Washerwoman, Village Scenes, and Cotton Dance.   In the liner notes, Cullen writes:  I chose these works not only because they deserve to be heard, but because they spoke to me as an artist. As a person of mixed Japanese and European descent, I feel a strong connection to Price’s desire to honor and elevate the marginalized people of her own mixed-race heritage personified in Scenes in Tin Can Alley, Thumbnail Sketches of a Day in the Life of a Washerwoman, and Three Miniature Portraits of Uncle Ned.

The composer Florence Price (1887– 1953) is the first African-American  woman to have an orchestral piece  played by a major American  orchestra: the Chicago Symphony  Orchestra performed her Symphony  in E Minor in 1933. Born in Little  Rock, Ark., and educated at the  New England Conservatory, her  career blossomed after she moved  to Chicago in 1927. Her music  received widespread recognition  beginning in the 1930s. Price wrote  over 300 works, and her  arrangements of spirituals were  often performed by Marian Anderson,  Leontyne Price and other singers.