J. H. Kwabena Nketia of Ghana turned 91 last Friday, June 22

Professor J. H. Kwabena Nketia

FredO, aka Fred Onovwerosuoke, writes about a recent birthday of the renowned Ghanaian musicologist J. H. Kwabena Nketia:

Hey Bill and all,

Professor J. H. Kwabena Nketia turned 91 last Friday (June 22). It's not too late for folks to email him or call to congratulate him. He is a blessing to humanity! Of course, I hope to see him in a few weeks when we honor him with an Award in Lome, Togo. And talking to him about a week ago, the man confirmed that he would be traveling to present a paper in South Africa before joining us in Togo!!! Need I say more about his boisterous energy? At 91 years young, What a blessing...!

Fredo

Fredomusic, Inc.

http://fredomusic.com

OxfordPress.com: Miami University Chamber Chorale Sing Undine Moore & Adolphus Hailstork 2 PM July 6, Cincinnati

[Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989); Adolphus C. Hailstork (b. 1941)]

Oxford Press

Oxford, Ohio

1:24 PM Monday, June 25, 2012

OXFORD — “The Miami University Chamber Chorale, directed by William Bausano and Jeremy D. Jones, will perform as part of the World Choir Games, being held in the United States for the first time July 4-14 in Cincinnati. The Miami choir, accompanied by Brad Caldwell, will perform at three venues during the World Choir Games, the first at 2 p.m. July 6 at the Aronoff Center.

“They will sing a repertoire of music by American composers Norman Dello Joio, Undine Moore and Adolphus Hailstork. They also will perform in a 'friendship concert' at 4 p.m. July 7 at Francis Seraph Church in downtown Cincinnati, with choirs from Croatia, China and the U.S.”

“Information about scheduling and tickets is available on the World Choir Games website, http://www.2012worldchoirgames.com.”

Adolphus C. Hailstork is a prolific African American composer and professor who was born on April 17, 1941. He is featured at AfriClassical.com. The Virginia Symphony, under the direction of JoAnn Falletta, recently announced the pending release of its first CD on the Naxos label, An American Port of Call, Naxos 8.559722 (2012).

Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989) is profiled at The Library of Virginia.

Eliesha Nelson: Varvara Adrianovna Gaigerova, Alexander Winkler & Pavel Fedorovich (Paul) Juon

[Russian Viola Sonatas; Eliesha Nelson, viola; Glen Inanga, piano; Sono Luminus DSL-92136 (2011) (71:02)]

At www.ElieshaNelson.com we are invited to "Meet The Composers" whose works make up the acclaimed CD of Eliesha Nelson and Glen Inanga, Russian Viola Sonatas:

Varvara Adrianovna Gaigerova was born in Oryekhovo-Zuyevo, Russia, on October 4, 1903, and died in Moscow on April 6, 1944, shortly before her 41st birthday. Not much can be found on her biographically, and I was unable to find out exactly why she died so young. Oryekhovo-Zuyevo is east of Moscow city, near the Klyazma River, and formed in 1917 as an amalgamation of several industrial towns. She studied at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1920's with Heinrich Neuhaus (piano), Nikolai Myaskovsy and Georgy Catoire (composition). Her earlier works are heavily influenced by Scriabin. She worked at the Bolshoi Ballet as a pianist, as well as in Oryekhovo-Zuyevo. In the 1930's she began incorporating folk music into her music from ethnic groups of the Soviet Union (Buryats, Uzbeks, Yakuts, Turkmenian, etc.) and writing works dedicated to socialism and the revolution. She was the only composer on this album to remain in Russia during political turmoil. Her works include:

• 3 Symphonies (1928, 1934, 1947)
• 
  
  3 Suites (1932-1935) Piano sonatas and shorter works over 150 romances
  based on poetry
  
  

On this recording: Suite for Viola and Piano, Op. 8

Alexander Winkler is the oldest of the three composers on the recording. He was born in Kharkov on March 3,1865, and died in Besançon, France on August 6, 1935. His viola works on this disc are the first recorded performances, as is the Suite by Gaigerova. Winkler studied in Paris where he studied piano with Victor- Alphonse Duvernoy (1842-1907) and in Vienna, piano with Theodor Leschetizky (1830- 1915) and composition with Karl Navrátil (1836-1914). He returned to Kharkov in 1890 to teach piano, and then from 1896-1924 he taught at the St. Petersburg/Petrograd Conservatory. His best known students were Sergei Prokofiev and Alfred Swan. He was a member of the “Belyayev Circle,” which was a group of composers including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov and Antatoly Lyadov, that championed a national style of classical music. Mitrofan Belyayev was a successful timber merchant and amateur violist who became an arts patron and publisher after hearing Alexander Glazunov's music. Many young composers hoping for patronage studied with members of this group, making it influential.

Winkler immigrated to France in 1924 to become a professor in the Besançon Conservatory, and the following year its director. He transcribed and arranged music composed by fellow “Belyayev Circle” composers. His works also include:

• 3 string quartets
• 1 string quintet
• 1 piano quartet
• 1 piano trio
• several songs
• piano pieces
• several orchestral works

On this recording: Two Pieces for Viola and Piano, Op.31 Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 10

Pavel Fedorovich (Paul) Juon was born in Moscow, on March 6, 1872 and died in Vevey, Switzerland, on August 21, 1940. He was the son of a prominent Moscow official of Swiss and German descent. He went to a German primary school in Russia and spoke German at home. He studied violin with Jan Hrimaly a the Moscow Conservatory, and composition with Sergei Taneyev and Anton Arensky. In 1894, he studied composition in Berlin with Woldermar Bargiel, the half brother of Clara Schumann. During 1915- 1918, Juon spent time as interpreter in a German prison camp, while his relatives fought for the Russians. After the war he moved to Berlin, where he achieved success as a composer. As a perfectionist who did not self promote, he was relatively well known while alive. He retired in 1934 for health reasons, and chose to move to Vevey, Switzerland, where he claimed citizenship. He was a prolific composer with at least 100 opuses, and his German musical influences nicknamed him the “Russian Brahms.” The Juon International Society can be found online at: http://www.juon.org/.

On this recording: Sonata in D major for Viola and Piano, Op. 15

'Sissieretta Jones' by Maureen Lee: 'Jones is buried in an unmarked grave in Rhode Island's Grace Church Cemetery'

[Sissieretta Jones: The Greatest Singer of Her Race 1868-1933; Maureen Donelly Lee; University of South Carolina Press (2012)]

John Malveaux of www.MusicUNTOLD.com brought this book to our attention:

The Richmond Voice

"Virginia native, Sissieretta Jones, blazed musical trail”

By Rick Massimo

"Born Matilda Sissieretta Joyner in Portsmouth, in Virginia's Eastern Shore, Sissieretta Jones became one of the greatest singers ever to come out of Rhode Island and one of the state's biggest musical mysteries. And a new book by a Rhode Island native tries to give Jones the credit she deserves. 

“Sissieretta Jones: The Greatest Singer of Her Race 1868-1933,” by Maureen Donelly Lee, traces the story of the opera, light opera and pop singer who moved to Providence's Congdon Street as a child.

“She eventually sang for four presidents and the British royal family, toured the country several times and traveled to South America, Australia, India, Europe and the West Indies and earned the nickname “Black Patti,” after the grand Italian diva Adelina Patti. Later, Jones toured with her own variety show, The Black Patti Troubadours, before returning to Providence to care for her mother and family, dying poor at age 65. Jones is buried in an unmarked grave in Rhode Island's Grace Church Cemetery.”

Violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama at Mammoth Lakes Music Festival July 18, 20, 23, 25 & 27

[Nokuthula Ngwenyama]

The renowned violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama (b. 1976), http://www.ngwenyama.com/, is President of the American Viola Society and has long been featured at AfriClassical.com. 

Ngwenyama will perform at the Mammoth Lakes Music Festival at Cerro Coso Community College at 7:30 PM on July 18, 20, 23, 25 and 27, 2012.

Jeffrey Green: 'Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Booker T. Washington'

[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Clarinet Quintet (35:39); Harold Wright, clarinet; Virginia Eskin, piano; Michael Ludwig, violin; Hawthorne String Quartet; Koch 3 7056 2H1 (1992)]




The English historian Jeffrey Green is author of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life, published by Pickering & Chatto Publishers (2011). He is also a Guest Blogger at AfriClassical. This is his fourth contribution.




Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Booker T. Washington

by

Jeffrey Green

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was the most famous black person in Britain in the first ten years of the twentieth century – he was replaced by Texas-born world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in 1911. Likewise, in the United States of America the most famous black person in this period was educator Booker T. Washington.

The British composer’s Twenty-four Negro Melodies, transcribed for pianoforte solo were published in 1905, and had a preface by the American. As Coleridge-Taylor had made his first visit to America in 1904, it is easy to believe that it was at that time that the two men discussed Negro Spirituals – which are the basis for sixteen of those twenty-four melodies. I have seen websites that suggest this.

A series of checks shows that belief to be false.

The preface was written at Tuskegee, Alabama and is dated October 24, 1904. You can see the entire article on the Booker T. Washington Papers site of the University of Illinois Press (this site is a delight to use, but it will soon be subscription only).[1] Coleridge-Taylor sailed from Liverpool on the Saxonia, bound for Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 October 1904.[2] The two men had not met at that time.

Washington said that in his response, of 10 June 1904, to Coleridge-Taylor’s letter of 21 May 1904 which had asked for advice and support during the composer’s visit.[3] He told the Briton “I admire greatly the work which you have done” and advised “Your name is quite familiar among the intelligent colored people of this county, but I very much fear you are not known very much except exclusively musical circles among the white people, in the latter respect you will have to advertise yourself”.

The publisher of Twenty-four Negro Melodies was Oliver Ditson, and it seems that their files do not exist. So when was this work commissioned? The 1915 biography used Coleridge-Taylor’s letters to Mamie and Andrew Hilyer, and in one dated 2 May 1903 we see Coleridge-Taylor writing “I have been asked to write a book on Negro Music by a firm of publishers in the States, and shall probably undertake it”, and on 14 September 1904 he told Hilyer “Ditsons, [sic] are the only publishers who have written to express their thanks and appreciation of my work”.[4]

The two men finally met, in Boston before the composer sailed back to England on 13 December 1904.

The educator’s daughter Portia was a fine pianist, who was to study in Berlin for two years. She picked C-T’s arrangement of “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child” at her audition with Professor Martin Krause. She promised her father to visit Coleridge-Taylor in England.[5]

The complete twenty-four Negro melodies seem to have been issued in Britain, in the Musicians Library series which included Bach, Chopin, Liszt and Wagner too. This was priced at 7s 6d (£0.37p). A set of six, including Portia Washington’s choice, was published by Winthrop Rogers Ltd of London, and sold at 4s (£.20p). Two more volumes were printed in England. Unlike the full set, Washington’s introduction was absent.

The educator had recommended that Coleridge-Taylor contacted baritone Harry Burleigh for help, and the two men did cooperate during the 1904 tour, and again in 1906. Burleigh came to England and that friendship flourished. Burleigh had studied, in New York, with Czech maestro Antonin Dvorak and introduced him to Negro spirituals – which appear in the master’s ninth symphony From the New World. Coleridge-Taylor was an enthusiast for Dvorak’s music.

Coleridge-Taylor’s relationship with African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar has been misunderstood (see jeffreygreen.co.uk page 050 Paul Laurence Dunbar in England).

We appear to be some way from understanding Coleridge-Taylor’s friendships with black Americans.

[1] Major British universities and the British Library have the 14 volumes, as does the London Library. Volumes are on sale on Abe Books at £15-£20 each. Louis R. Harlan and Raymond Smock (eds), The Booker T. Washington Papers Vol 8 (1904-1906), pp 112-117.

[2] The Times (London), 24 October 1904, p 2 has Cunard’s advertisement. This matches Coleridge-Taylor’s letter to Andrew Hilyer of Washington, DC, dated 22 October 1904 quoted in W. C. Berwick Sayers, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Musician. His Life and Letters London: Cassell, 1915, p 157 [note the 1927 edition has different type setting and so there are page number differences].

[3] Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock (eds), The Booker T. Washington Papers Vol 7, 1903-1904, pp 527-529.

[4] Berwick Sayers, Coleridge-Taylor pp 143, 155.

[5] Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp 117-118.

[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a comprehensive Works List and a Bibliography by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma, www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com. We are collaborating with the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation of the U.K., www.SCTF.org.uk]

Inner City Youth Orchestra Of Los Angeles To Close Season With Performance At Walt Disney Concert Hall 3 PM July 8

DISNEY HALL CONCERT PRESS RELEASE
www.ICYOLA.org

LOS ANGELES, CA — JUNE 11, 2012 — The Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (ICYOLA) will present its Season Ending Concert at the world famous Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles at 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 8, 2012. The program will feature Crown Imperial by William Walton, Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, the Finale to The Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky, and violinist Jordan Busa performing Meditation from “Thais” by Jules Massenet. The highlight of the program will be a performance of Piano Concerto No. 1 by Sergei Prokofiev, featuring 16-year old pianist Ferre Hodges. The orchestra will also perform a Tribute to the late Whitney Houston.

ICYOLA is comprised of primarily African-American youth aged 10-25 from the various communities of Greater Los Angeles. It transforms lives and minds of inner city youth by teaching its members the great music of the world, and providing performance opportunities in the greatest settings of the world. Within the last year, the orchestra has performed for the Martin Luther King Memorial dedication luncheon in Washington, DC, for the Los Angeles Times Book Fair on the campus of USC, for the NAACP National Convention, and for a presidential fundraiser honoring First Lady Michelle Obama.

“Our objective is to prepare young people for life – both in music and otherwise,” comments ICYOLA founder, music director and conductor Charles Dickerson. “We seek to create pathways into major orchestras, the Fortune 500, and the Presidency of the United States,” he adds. “We provide a nurturing environment of acceptance and inclusion where our members can hone their skills – something that is too often lacking in other programs in which our members either are or have been a part.”

“We are grateful to all who have made this opportunity for young people from our community to perform at Disney Hall a reality,” says Dickerson. “We are particularly grateful for our corporate sponsors – Toyota Motor Company, Northrup Grumman, American Airlines, Wells Fargo, United Parcel Service – and the support of our political leaders – particularly Supervisors Ridley-Thomas and Yaroslavsky – and others for their generous support. Los Angeles is a better city because of ICYOLA, and our entire community will be more harmonious because of this event.”

Julius P. Williams Conducts Moscow Conservatory Symphony Orchestra on YouTube

[Julius P. Williams]

Julius Penson Williams (b. 1954) is an African American composer and conductor, educator, recording artist, author and artistic director. His career is detailed at AfriClassical.com and at his personal website, http://www.juliuspwilliams.com

4 Haiku Movements 1 and 2 Julius P. Williams conductor (6:45)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVFTr1Zwjk

Uploaded by Juliuspw2 on Jun 12, 2010 

Moscow Conservatory Symphony Orchestra

Composer Dennis Leclaire

Julius P. Williams, Conductor

May 17, 2010

John Malveaux Reviews Concert of Afro-American Chamber Music Society Orchestra, Conducted by Janise White

John Malveaux of www.MusicUNTOLD.com sends this concert review:

Afro-American Chamber Music Society Orchestra, Janise White, conductor, presented Le Chevalier de St. Georges Concert Friday, June 22, 2012, Wilshire United Methodist Church, Los Angeles. Program opened with Star Spangled Banner, Janise White arrangement. In celebration of JUNETEENTH, ‘St. Louis Greys Quick Step’ was performed with a backdrop of coordinated precision marching by four Camp Pendleton Color Guards. Joseph William Postlewaite (1827-1889), the composer, was a Negro Corporal in the Union Army’s 148^th Infantry. His march predates Sousa’s marches. In celebration of Black Music Month, the Orchestra played ‘Sinfonia No. 1’ by Chevalier de St. Georges and ‘Sempre Avanti’ by Stephen James Taylor whose is a significant film composer. Commendations were presented to Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas and Councilman Herb Wesson. Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas reciprocated with a Certificate to the Orchestra and reference to continued support. Chris Woods was featured soloist in a performance of ‘Violin Concerto in D’ by Chevalier de St. Georges. Chris interjected some improvisations “consistent with music of the period” according to Chris. The concert closed with ‘Sinfonia No. 2’ by Chevalier de St. Georges.

Of special note during the program, Professor White mentioned that the Orchestra performed during the Washington DC ceremony unveiling Dr. King’s statue and she conducted workshop(s) at Howard University. She was surprised to learn that the music of Chevalier de St. Georges was not known or available at such a prestigious University.  

[Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Afro-French composer and conductor, is featured at AfriClassical.com]


Comment by email:

During the music workshops, I had the honor to introduce the Howard University Faculty  to contemporary composers: Dr. James Lee, III of Morgan State University and Jeraldine Saunders Herbison, among other distinguished composers of the African Diaspora.

Also, it must be mentioned that the extraordinarily gifted violinist, Chris Woods owned the St. Georges Violin Concerto in D Major, becoming one with the music. His impeccable technique brilliantly showcased the very essence of St. George's phenomenal virtuosity.  Mr. Woods' stunning performance drew a standing ovation from the enthusiastic audience.

I produced a new edition of Sinfonia in G and the Concerto for the performance along with  orchestrated arrangements of the National Anthem and St. Louis Greys Quick Step!  Prof. Janise White 

'My Lord What A Mornin' - H. T. Burleigh by Imanuel Choir, Tangerang, Indonesia on YouTube

[Henry T. Burleigh]

'My Lord What A Mornin' – H.T. Burleigh (3:52)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuEeWgm389M

“Published on Jun 12, 2012 by andreasrahardjo

Imanuel Choir present Gospel & Spiritual Concert 2012 @ GKI Maleo Raya Bintaro - Tangerang, Indonesia on 3rd June 2012”

Henry "Harry" Thacker Burleigh (1866-1949) was an African American composer, arranger and baritone soloist who is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a comprehensive Works List by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma, http://www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com Here is the entry for My Lord, what a mornin':

My Lord, what a mornin', for high voice & piano. New York: G. Ricordi, 1918 (#116493). 6p. Text: Revelations 8:10. Text based on Matthew 24:29-31. == Duration: 3:15. Library: Library of Congress, Spingarn.