Richmond Choral Society: Songs of Undine Smith Moore on March 21

[Undine Smith Moore]

RichmondChoralSociety.org

Women of Note

“The Chorus That Gives Back to the Community”

Featuring Choral Music & Art Songs by Alice Parker, Emma Lou Diemer, Gwyneth Walker and African-American Composer Undine Smith Moore

Markus Compton, conductor

Lisa Edwards-Burrs, soprano

Keith Tan, piano

Sunday, March 21 at 4 P.M.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

520 North Boulevard

Richmond

The concert will be preceded by a talk with soprano Lisa Edwards-Burrs at 3:30. This concert is presented as part of the statewide initiative, Minds Wide Open: Virginia Celebrates Women in the Arts"
Undine Smith Moore: "Oh, that Bleeding Lamb", "I Believe This is Jesus"

Undine Smith Moore

http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whoweare/exhibits/destiny/notable/smith.htm

“Often referred to as the 'Dean of Black Women Composers,' Moore began composing while at Fisk University. Although she composed works for piano and for other instrumental groups, Moore is best known for her choral works, including Scenes from the Life of a Martyr, based on the works of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.” Author Helen Walker-Hill devotes a scholarly 40-page chapter to Undine Smith Moore in her book From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music, University of Illinois Press (2007).

A-R Editions Publishes Florence Price's Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3, Edited by Rae Linda Brown

[Musicologist Rae Linda Brown, Vice President of Undergraduates, Loyola Marymount University]

areditions.com/

Florence Price Symphonies nos. 1 and 3 

Edited by Rae Linda Brown.

Rashida N. Black of The Myrtle Hart Society alerts AfriClassical to the November 2008 release of Florence Price's Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3. These MUSA editions are published by A-R Editions: “Music of the United States of America (MUSA) is a national series of scholarly editions that seeks to reflect the character and diversity of American music making. Published as a set within the Recent Researches in American Music series, MUSA is a joint venture with the American Musicological Society (AMS).  MU19 / A 66 ISBN 0-89579-638-4 (10-digit) ( November 2008) lii + 296 pp. $225.00 ISBN 978-0-89579-638-7 (13-digit).” 

“Florence Beatrice Smith Price (1887-1953), who settled in Chicago in 1927, was the most widely known African-American woman composer from the 1930s until her death. This edition presents two important unpublished orchestral works: the Symphony no. 1 in E Minor (1932) and the Symphony no. 3 in C Minor (1940). The style of these works is quite different. Price's Symphony in E Minor is squarely in the nationalist tradition, and it may be more fully considered in the context of the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Cultural characteristics are borne out in the pentatonic themes, call-and-response procedures, syncopated rhythms of the third movement's Juba dance, the preponderance of altered tones, and the timbral differentiation of instrumental choirs (the juxtaposition of the brass and woodwind choirs, for example).

“The Symphony in C Minor was inspired by new philosophical, political, and social currents, stemming from the Chicago Renaissance, underway from 1935-1950. The Great Migration (of blacks from the south to Chicago), the Depression, and the adjustment to urban life provided vivid life experiences as subject matter for Chicago Renaissance writers and artists (including Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Margaret Bonds). Price's third symphony, which omits overtly black themes and simple dance rhythms, presents a modern approach to composition–a synthesis, rather than a retrospective view, of African-American life and culture.” [Florence Beatrice Smith Price and Margaret Allison Bonds are profiled at AfriClassical.com]

David Shaffer-Gottschalk Plays Works of Margaret Allison Bonds & Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: 24 Negro Melodies; David Shaffer-Gottschalk, piano; Troy 93031 (2007)]

Petersburg People's News
February 27, 2008

Virginia State University Department of Music, Art and Design presents pianist David Shaffer-Gottschalk March 2, 4pm, at Virginia State University’s Davis Recital Hall. The performance will include works by: Samuel Barber, Allan Blank, Claude Debussy, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Margaret Bonds.