Classic Ross Amico

Tag: African-American Composers

Marian Anderson Florence Price Triumph

On this date in 1939 – Easter Sunday, as it turns out – in a supreme demonstration of turning lemons into lemonade, Marian Anderson, barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, on account of her race, sang instead from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, to a diverse crowd of 750,000 people on the mall and a national radio audience estimated in the millions.

The program concluded with the spiritual “My Soul is Anchored in the Lord,” in an arrangement by Florence Price (1887-1953). By coincidence, today also happens to be Price’s birthday. Price, born in Little Rock, Arkansas, became the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, when her Symphony in E minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony in 1933. Needless to say, in an era when White American males struggled to find acceptance on Eurocentric classical music programs, Price, as a Black American woman, faced even greater challenges

The playing field has shifted in recent years, and interest in Price’s music has been on the rise. It’s hard to believe, for a composer of her accomplishments, that dozens of her manuscripts were rescued from her dilapidated summer home, on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois, only as recently as 2009.

It’s an exciting time to be alive. Who knows what other musical riches are out there, undervalued in their time, awaiting rediscovery?

Anderson sings “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord”

Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor

April 9, 2021
Joplin’s Treemonisha Education vs Superstition

It’s education versus superstition in Scott Joplin’s “Treemonisha” – with the added peril of being tossed into a wasps’ nest!

“Treemonisha” (1915) has often been described, though perhaps not entirely accurately, as a “ragtime opera” – Joplin was, after all, the king of the rag – but his opera encompasses a broader range of influences than that would suggest. Even so, none of it could have been written by anyone else. Everything is distilled into a unified artistic statement. Better still, all of it is tuneful and engaging and very, very American.

“Treemonisha” will be our featured work this Sunday morning on WPRB, the crowning achievement in three hours of earworms and toe-tappers by American composers of African descent.

We’ll also hear ballet music, “Miss Sally’s Party” (1940), by William Grant Still, and the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra will perform a medley of hit tunes from the Broadway revue “Shuffle Along” (1921), by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake.

Perhaps the least likely pupil of Edgard Varèse, Still cut his teeth writing arrangements for Paul Whiteman, W.C. Handy, and Artie Shaw. According to Blake, one of Still’s improvisations while working in the pit band for “Shuffle Along” became the basis for George Gershwin’s hit tune “I Got Rhythm.” Still didn’t appear to be bitter about the appropriation (which Blake conceded was probably inadvertent), and in fact Still and Gershwin were on friendly terms and made it a point to attend performances of one another’s music.

“Shuffle Along” was the first financially successful Broadway play to have African-American writers and an all African-American cast. “I’m Just Wild About Harry” became the show’s break-out number. The song shattered what had been a taboo against musical and stage depictions of romantic love between African-Americans.

Fun fact: So mainstream was the show’s success, and so enduring its influence, that Harry Truman selected “I’m Just Wild About Harry” for his campaign song during the presidential election of 1948.

We’re just wild about light music, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Join me for these compositions in black and light, on Classic Ross Amico.

February 18, 2018
Music Color & Expectations

Does the color of one’s skin have any bearing on the kind of music one writes? Should a black composer be expected to incorporate jazz or spiritual inflections into his or her music?

Tune in tomorrow morning to have lazy expectations confounded. We’ll have representatives of the jazzy and spiritual schools, of course, but we’ll also hear works by a Pulitzer Prize winner who makes his home in New Jersey, an Afro-Cuban master of the guitar, a musketeer in the service of Louis XVI, and an Englishman infatuated with the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Clipper Erickson, piano of Westminster Conservatory of Music will drop by at around 10:00 to talk a bit about R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, who went on to become an important voice in American music. Erickson’s album of Dett’s complete piano works, “My Cup Runneth Over,” has recently been issued on the Navona Records label.

In addition, we’ll hear recordings of the late conductor Paul Freeman, some spirituals sung by Marian Anderson, and the cantata “Done Made My Vow” by Adolphus Hailstork, in a recording made by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

In advance of MLK Day, it’s an exploration of content, character and color, with music by composers of African descent, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM or at wprb.com. Music is King, on Classic Ross Amico.

January 13, 2016
Paul Freeman A Musical Celebration

Paul Freeman has always been a conductor after my own heart. A champion of unusual and neglected repertoire, Freeman recorded prolifically – some 200 albums. I won’t get into whether or not the color of his skin had a negative impact on his career. Freeman was a positive force who always found a way.

He held posts with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, and the Helsinki Philharmonic. He was music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, and the Victoria Symphony in British Columbia.

Freeman retired from conducting in 2011. He died on July 21, at the age of 79. We celebrate his artistry and love of music this week on “The Lost Chord,” by way of his extensive and varied discography.

From his series, “Paul Freeman Introduces,” on the Albany label, we’ll hear music by Richard Yardumian, former composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra . “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” was one of a number of Yardumian works to be documented by Ormandy and the Philadelphians during the LP era. Atonishingly, none of them ever made it to compact disc. Leave it to Freeman to fill in the gap.

Adophus Hailstork, one of the artists Freeman favored as part of his landmark “Black Composers Series,” set down for Columbia Records back in the 1970s, will also be represented. His “Sonata da Chiesa” for string orchestra grew out of Hailstork’s love for cathedrals.

Freeman was always an enthusiastic champion of new music and works by African-American composers. He was also a sensitive and sympathetic accompanist, as borne out by his many concerto recordings. Of those, we’ll hear what is probably the strangest of them all – Morton Gould’s “Tap Dance Concerto.”

Finally, we’ll have selections from the “African Suite,” by Nigerian composer Fela Sowande, a work Freeman recorded twice, for Columbia in the 1970s, and decades later for Cedille Records, as part of the three-volume “African Heritage Symphonic Series.”

It’s a nice assortment, though of course it only scratches the surface. It is with mixed emotions that I bid “Farewell to Freeman,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6. You can also listen to it later as a webcast, at wwfm.org.

August 9, 2015

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