Classic Ross Amico

Tag: R. Nathaniel Dett

Dett’s “Ordering of Moses” Black History Month

It’s Black History Month. Rather than wait for the Passover season, I thought this would be an excellent excuse to unveil a recent recording, on the Bridge Records, Inc. label, of R. Nathaniel Dett’s “The Ordering of Moses.”

Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, was born on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. He studied all over the place, including Oberlin, the Eastman School, Harvard, and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, France. He taught all over the place, too. He made influential contacts and brought increased visibility to Black concert music. His was an important voice in the history of American art.

“The Ordering of Moses” was composed in 1932. The recording, which documents a live 2014 concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival Chorus conducted by James Conlon, is electrifying.

Hear it today. It’s one of our featured works between noon and 4:00 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

February 7, 2017
MLK Day: Celebrating Black Composers on WPRB

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”

So said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On this, the eve of King’s birthday anniversary, we present a full morning of music by composers of African descent, much of it underrepresented at any time of the year. You’ll hear fine and shamefully neglected works by David Baker, Marion Bauer, Henry T. Burleigh, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Roque Cordero, William Levi Dawson, Duke Ellington, Adolphus Hailstork, Ulysses Kay, Tania León, the Chevalier J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas, Florence Price, William Grant Still, and George Walker, or as many of these as we can get to.

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.

We’ll be there before sunrise to honor MLK’s vision of a daybreak of freedom and justice and equality, from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We rise up with greater readiness, on Classic Ross Amico.

January 14, 2016
MLK Day Eve Music by Black Composers

Coming up in the 9:00 hour, we’ll hear Adolphus Hailstork’s cantata, “Done Made My Vow,” on texts steeped in African American history and the writings and speeches of figures such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

On the eve of MLK’s birthday, it’s all music by composers of African descent until 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.

PHOTOS: All hail Hailstork (left), with a debt to Dett

January 14, 2016
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
Clipper Erickson Rediscovering Lost Piano Gems

While the rest of the world is looking ahead to a new year, Clipper Erickson, piano is on the look-out for new repertoire.

Erickson, who is on the faculty of Westminster Conservatory of Music, Rider University, in Princeton, and Boyer College of Music and Dance – Temple University, in Philadelphia, has two new releases of rediscovered works which have languished in obscurity for decades.

These include world premiere recordings of pieces by R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves who became an important figure in American music, and Cyril Scott, in his day a frontrunner of the English avant-garde, whose reputation faded over the decades until he was remembered, if at all, as the composer of one or two innocuous miniatures in Grandma’s piano bench.

Interestingly, there was a creative exchange between the two by way of eccentric Australian pianist Percy Grainger, who championed works of both composers. You can read all about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/12/classical_music_local_pianist.html

January 1, 2016

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