Wednesday, May 25, 2022

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.

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