URBAN PLAYGROUND DIGITAL

Welcome to our collection of digital resources:

This includes video (Composer Shorts, Listening Guides, & Live Performances), Urban Playground Editions (our publishing arm), and Program Notes.

Please also feel welcome to reach out to Dr. Cunningham and Urban Playground here with any questions.

COMPOSER SHORTS

LISTENING GUIDES

LIVE PERFORMANCES

URBAN PLAYGROUND EDITIONS

PROGRAM NOTES

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

COMPOSER SHORTS

TREVOR WESTON

HARRY T. BURLEIGH

EVAN WILLIAMS

S. COLERIDGE TAYLOR

LISTENING GUIDES & PERFORMANCES

JENNIFER JOLLEY: SPIELZEUG STRASSENBAHN

WILLIAM GRANT STILL: AND THEY LYNCHED HIM ON A TREE

LIVE PERFORMANCES

WILLIAM GRANT STILL

S. COLERIDGE TAYLOR

EVAN WILLIAMS

HARRY T. BURLEIGH: SELECTED SONGS

URBAN PLAYGROUND EDITIONS

Welcome to our collection of editions. The following are arranged for string orchestra, unless otherwise specified. Soloists appear in (brackets).

BURLEIGH, HARRY T.
​The Glory of the Day was in her Face (soprano)
​Your Eyes So Deep (mezzo)
Were You There? (mezzo)
Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray (soprano)

COLTRANE, ALICE TURIYA
Prema, Transfiguration (1978) (harp)
​Radhe-Shyam, Transcendence (1977) (harp)

MAHLER, ALMA SCHINDLER
Fünf Lieder (soprano)
i. Die stille Stadt (Dehmel)
ii. In meines vaters Garten (Hartleben) 
iii. Laue Sommernacht (Falke)
iv. Bei dir ist es traut (Rilke)
v. Ich wandle unter Blumen (Heine)

SCHUMANN, CLARA WIECK 
Assorted Songs (soprano)
Lorelei (1843), published posthumously (1990) (Heine)
Sechs Lieder aus ‘Jucunde’ von Hermann Rollet, Op. 23 (1853)
4. Auf einem grünen Hügel
5. Das ist ein Tag
Die gute nacht, die ich dir sage (1841), published posthumously (1992) (Rückert)
Ich stand in dunklen Träumen, Op. 13, Nr. 1 (1840) (Heine)

SMYTH, ETHEL
Three Moods of the Sea (mezzo)

STILL, WILLIAM GRANT
Troubled Island Suite (2.2.2.2-3.1.0.0-PK, tom-tom-Pno-string orchestra, with CM and principal VA solo)

​TAYLOR, S. COLERIDGE
​Onaway! Awake, beloved! (tenor)
Hiawatha's Vision (baritone) 
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Please also feel welcome to reach out to Dr. Cunningham and Urban Playground here with any questions.

PROGRAM NOTES & BIOGRAPHIES

Balenkowski, Maciej 

Sinfonietta: Time is Ticking
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20-year-old Maciej Bałenkowski's Sinfonietta was winner of the 2015 National Composition Contest in Kraków, Poland. It emanates a respect for tradition (echoes of Rite of Spring), while creating a unique sound world. Bałenkowski's piece was the genesis of tonight’s program and the ensemble size fits the exact specifications of his piece.

Bologne, Joseph, Chevalier de Saint-Georges

Violin Concerto in G Major, Op. 2, No. 1

This violin concerto was the first of 14 virtuosic works for solo violin and orchestra, in addition to six operas, eight symphonie concertantes, several symphonies (six of which were commissioned by Haydn), and countless vocal and chamber works by Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

The Chevalier was a socially and artistically revolutionary force in the city of Paris, a guest at the court of Marie Antoinette, a rebel celebrated in antislavery circles in London, and a founding member of the abolitionist organization Société des Amis des Noirs (Society of the Friends of Blacks). A Virtuoso violinist, composer, conductor and athlete, but always, too, a Mulatto. 

As many composer-performers of the time, the Chevalier wrote to his own abilities on his primary instrument. A first rate violinist, the opening movement is centered around an arch theme, and is full of quick runs that demonstrate his mastery of new techniques made possible by the groundbreaking practices of French bow-maker François Tourte.

The slow second movement is free in an unprecedented way. The orchestration is bare, leaving room for the solo voice to travel freely. As was typical, the movement builds to a cadenza (an unaccompanied passage for the soloist). As this work is not standard western classical repertory, there is no typical cadenza in place. In principle, this is undeniably egregious; in practice, it exists as an opportunity. I felt the need to create a statement of respect to the legacy the Chevalier deserved, and in so doing, pay homage to the musical titans of sister genres and generations that I hold in equal esteem. Early on, I decided to name the cadenza Nanon, after Anne Nanon, the Chevalier’s mother and freed Senegalese slave who lived on the island of Guadeloupe at the time of his conception. In this vein, I aspire to include musical statements from personally iconic female figures who spoke, sang, and testified more effectively than I ever could. I quote Nina Simone's recording of “Black Is the Color” alongside extensions of themes found throughout the concerto and self-composed phrases that act in a manner reflective of my own experience straddling several worlds without feeling the consistent, grounding acceptance of one. Nanon also seeks to recreate improvisational elements of my father's work as a jazz percussionist, through which I have a profound appreciation for titans like Fela Kuti and Clyde Stubblefield. 

I see Nanon as the work’s peak. It is representative of Anne’s inurement as a woman taken from her native Senegal and the maternal sacrifices she made in order to protect the reputation of her gifted son in a Europe that extended its Enlightenment privileges to everyone except people of color. Finally, the cadenza stands as acknowledgment and appreciation of the caged freedom that the Chevalier experienced in Paris at the court of Marie-Antoinette; he was accepted to a point, but due to his African heritage, he was not included within the ranks of French nobility. My intention is to reflect the all too common sacrifices made by people of color at the altar of White comfort, a disturbing practice with a reach that spans centuries, both into the Chevalier’s period of Western history, and in every element of contemporary culture. Meterless rogue chords in the middle of the cadenza signify the frustration and powerlessness the Chevalier felt after removing himself from consideration for the position of director of the Paris Opera, a decision he made in order to avoid upsetting three operatic soloists who declaimed against being subordinate to a person of color and possibly unsettling a precarious relationship with the queen.

The third movement, marked Rondo, is like a coda to the first two movements. The principal theme is brief but repeated and embellished. This theme then expands to include a short minor section and concludes by restating the opening, adding a series of virtuosic expansions on this idea, and quoting it one final time at the conclusion of the work. 

It is only at this point that we hear a resolution in the harmonic tensions of the second movement and a conservatism that also exists as a subtly edged-out hint at the Chevalier's future multidimensional compositions for solo violin, none of which are included in the existing body of commonly performed Western classical music. 

Written by Jessica McJunkins

Burleigh, Harry T.

Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) - Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, baritone, composer, arranger, and publisher H. T. Burleigh became a significant cultural figure, when he published the first solo concert spiritual, thereby professionalizing the genre both among composers and performers. In his 50-year career he wrote hundreds of concert spirituals, art songs, choral arrangements and instrumental compositions.  During his studies at the National Conservatory of Music, he influenced Antonín Dvořák’s embrace of African American and Native American musical idioms. Burleigh’s decades-long soloist career desegregated New York’s renowned St. George’s Church and Temple Emanu-El. He was a founding member of ASCAP and worked for over 30 years as an editor at G. Ricordi Music Publishing Company. His voice students were international performers including Paul Robeson, Marion Anderson and Enrico Caruso.  However Burleigh’s reach also extended to seminal early 20th-century intellectual figures such as James Weldon Johnson, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B Du Bois and Alain Locke, as well as musical and literary like Florence Price, Will Marion Cook, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Langston Hughes. Burleigh’s life was one robust both within and outside of the veil. 

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My Lord, What a Mornin’

​With the power his booming baritone voice, Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949) transformed western classical music in both vocal and instrumental genres. He was born in Erie, Pennsylvania where he trained as a singer and began his role as a professional church musician among Christian and Jewish congregations. As a student at the National Conservatory of Music of America, he introduced Dvorak to spirituals, encouraged fellow underrepresented students (including Will Marion Cook), and went on to enjoy a career as a singer, composer, mentor, and music editor at G. Ricordi. Burleigh’s 1918 arrangement of “My Lord, What a Mornin’” continues to be popular among choruses. Dr. Paul T. Kwami, current musical director of the critically acclaimed Fisk Jubilee Singers, wrote: “[As the song progresses,] The tenors have their chance to shine as they introduce this new melody that is set to the text, “Done quit all my worl’ly ways, jine dat hebbenly ban.” I love the movement of the soprano line that includes a downward leap of an octave, while the volume of the music reduces from loud to soft, slows down and returns gently to the first melody. The song grows in volume and intensity, reminding me of the appearance of the early morning golden sun. But this beautiful melody that is so wonderfully harmonized returns to quietness. The words of the final phrase read: “When de stars begin to fall.” The chord on the final word is the softest. The stars that light up the sky at night don’t fall literally, but rather disappears as the sun rises.” Written by Dr. Marti Slaten

Carwithen, Doreen

Concerto for Piano and Strings

Unlike concertos of earlier eras, Carwithen’s requires no lengthy introduction for the soloist, instead jumping into the fray without hesitation (or in medias res). The technical and virtuosic demands of the first movement are oft reminiscent of Liszt’s love of octaves and rollicking about the keyboard, yet we are clearly in a British worldview of tonality, with Carwithen proving herself a worthy heir to Vaughan Williams and Finzi.
For all the virtuosic demands on the soloist in the first movement, the second requires a completely different skill set. The piano becomes an accompanist, inviting the concertmaster to an extensive solo. A gentle, pulsing syncopation pervades throughout. 

The third movement is exuberant and playful. An extensive cadenza calls for flourishes and speed from the soloist, but also geniality and repose. A brief moment of reflection and beauty from the strings precedes the work’s conclusion with powerful chords from the soloist and orchestra. This is the US premiere of Carwithen’s “Concerto for Piano and Strings.” Tonight’s performance is generously underwritten by the William Alwyn Foundation.

Dawson, William Levi

Ezekiel Saw de Wheel

Born in Anniston, Alabama, William Dawson (1899-1990) spent the majority of his career at Professor of Music (1931-1955) at Tuskegee Institute where his compositions and his direction of the Institute choir received international acclaim. An alumnus of Tuskegee, Horner Institute of Fine Arts, and the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, he also studied at Eastman School of Music. “Ezekiel” (1942) exemplifies Dawson’s gift for orchestration and the ties between singing and tonight’s orchestral music. Arranged to be sung by one-hundred voices or twenty, one can hear his contribution to late Romantic style (which he mastered in his 1932 “Negro Folk Symphony”) in expanded harmonies, tight yet buoyant rhythmic settings, and representation of the supernatural. At once, “Ezekiel” expresses the significance of the ring shout and the interconnection between earthly and heavenly life. Written by Dr. Marti Slaten

Dvořák, Antonín

Symphony 9 “From the New World”
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The Czech-born composer Antonín Dvořák was actually a New Yorker from 1892–1895. He was lured to the States by Jeanette Thurber to head the nascent National Conservatory of Music and took up residence on East 17th Street. He brought immediate European cachet to the American compositional scene, but he also brought a foreigner’s perspective.  

Dvořák, unlike so many, recognized the importance of African American musics—especially the spiritual—and Native American musics. He was deeply impacted by Harry T. Burleigh, who was a student at the Conservatory while he was director. It was Dvorak’s listening to spirituals sung by Burleigh that inspired the melodic theme of the famous Largo second movement. Before the orchestra performs, baritone Lawrence Craig envokes Burleigh’s concert spiritual arrangement of “Deep River,” the song that launched the career of Craig’s mentor baritone William Warfield, as well as so many others. It was pieces like “Deep River” that inspired Dvorak to write his ninth symphony and incorporate melodic concepts* from American music traditions. In an interview with the New York Herald from May 21, 1893, Dvořák shared, “I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States. When I first came here last year I was impressed with this idea and it has developed into a settled conviction.These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are American.” 

*Yet he was more of a casual observer of these traditions than a researcher. Dvořák did not transcribe or directly incorporate any American folk music into his works. While some of his “New World” melodies may seem folk-based, such as the “Going Home” theme from the second movement, they are entirely of Dvořák’s creation. 

NB: The second movement also appeared on the 1940 New York Philharmonic concert on which William Grant Still's And They Lynched Him on a Tree was premiered.

Handel, George Frideric

Dixit Dominus

Dixit Dominus, a cantata setting of Psalm 110, was written by a plucky 22-year-old Handel, who had just arrived in Italy. The work commences with a massive first movement, emphasizing the promise of the Lord (Dixit!, often heard in groups of three, echoing the trinity). Handel frequently calls on a cantus firmus to ground movements structurally. Following the imposing opening, there is a duet for Alto and continuo (Virgam virtutis…) and a sarabande featuring Soprano soloist (Tecum principium…). The chorus roars back about what the Lord has promised (Juravit Dominus) in a style and structure that anticipates his sinfonia-overture to Messiah written some 34 years later. The simultaneously meditative and chatty fifth movement partners slow-moving cantus firmus lines against animated text from the other voice parts. Next, the wrath text, introduced by soprano soloists, appears in an almost pining, lilting meter. Judgement is swift and virtuosic (Judicare), and it’s difficult to miss Handel’s text painting of the Lord crushing the skulls of his enemies. The seventh movement is peaceable, evoking the gentle ebb and flow of water. The final movement, a setting of the “Lesser Doxology,” starts in a stately fashion before the quicksilver et in saecula saeculorum. Amen (and forever, Amen) concludes the work.  

Jolley, Jennifer
Spielzeug Straßenbahn 
When asked to re-imagine a Brandenburg concerto, I was thrilled: this gave me the excuse to write for a Baroque ensemble.
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When thinking about this project, I noticed that trains have a constant musical energy about them (similar to Brandenburg concertos), and I was instantly reminded of this upon viewing the jolly Neighborhood Trolley from the iconic educational television program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. This toy trolley merrily converses with characters and easily traverses both Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
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With this in mind, I make my musical offering in the form of a toy trolley, one that will bridge the gap between my twenty-first century contribution and Bach’s eighteenth-century one, taking us to an imagined time and place that I have never traveled. (Written by the composer)

Price, Florence

Violin Concerto No. 2

Florence Price (1887–1953) was a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, where she lived until 1927 when she and her family relocated to Chicago. Fleeing the racial terrorism of the Jim Crow South, Price found herself in a city whose segregation policies had led Black Chicagoans to establish economic, artistic, and scholarly institutions that facilitated creative and communal growth. Already a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM), Price became an active (and famous!) participant in the Chicago chapter, which hosted recitals and conferences and served as an important networking space for Black musicians. Like her contemporary and colleague Harry T. Burleigh, Price was interested in the creative potential of a classical music aesthetic built on antebellum-era Black folk and western classical music genres. Rather than a conservative or conventional venture, Price’s stylistic decisions exemplified how Black Americans were envisioning the creative potential of past artistic material in contemporary expressions of Black American life. Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 contains four distinct sections; each section contains the same melodic material that reappears in different orchestrations, textures, and/or accompanied with new motivic material. Price’s structural and textual decisions indicate a close study of spirituals and juba dance, from her use of varied repetition, heterophonic textures, rhythmic material, and harmonic language. In less than 20 minutes, Price showed how adhering to standard composing rules, be it for concertos or spirituals, provided innovative ways to engage with these art forms, crafting new ways of hearing the past and understanding its artistic purpose in the present. Violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins brings her unparalleled virtuosity and commitment to social justice to this performance. Written by A. Kori Hill

Seeholzer, Julia

Yours
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Julia Seeholzer's Yours is a touching reflection on missed connections in the 21st century, featuring solos from the principal violinist, violist and cellist. Julia wrote Yours "after [reconnecting] with an old friend for the first time in 3-4 years. We're rarely in the same geographic location, so seeing him was bittersweet, especially after having some great talks and exchanging music with one another. Yours came out of my longing for some more face-to-face time with him, and also acted as an expression of pining after the "what-ifs" that come with relationships that never quite sync up, for whatever reason.

Smyth, Ethel

Three Moods of the Sea

Though the work’s complete title is “Three Moods of the Sea for Orchestra and Mezzo Soprano,” it has been more than a century since anyone has heard the “orchestra” portion of the title. Smyth’s full orchestration was remains in manuscript in London, but Artistic Director Thomas Cunningham has arranged the piano-vocal score for string orchestra. Smyth selected and reordered the poems from Arthur Symons’s 1892 collection “Silhouettes.”

Smyth uses many of the same techniques from her 1906 opera The Wreckers, which is about Cornish villagers who darkened the lighthouse on stormy nights, luring ships onto the rocky coast to plunder their cargo. Swirling chromatic lines and rocking rhythmic cells dot the work, suggesting the sea in various states. Yet Smyth is also prone to simplicity, as seen in the first movement’s opening section and the third movement.
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Smyth plays on the sea’s unpredictability, as in the first movement where gentle undulations become a raucous storm, only to resolve into restless rocking again. The second movement melds a dance-like quality to the precarious nature of the sea. The squalls--sudden and violent gusts of wind often accompanied by rain--are again relentlessly unpredictable. Agitated, temperamental lines are partnered with a heroic vocal line. The third movement is a respite: Elegant and steady, it looks to the ‘moment after,’ and the aftermath’s beauty.

Still, William Grant

And They Lynched Him on a Tree

Alain Locke, dean of the Harlem Renaissance (and editor of the seminal text The New Negro), was a fundamental figure in William Grant Still’s life (1885-1978) and specifically in the creation of And They Lynched Him on a Tree. It was Locke who initially sent the poem by Katharine Garrison Chapin to Still and even reviewed the work’s premiere: “[It] universalizes its particular theme and expands a Negro tragedy into a purging and inspiring plea for justice and a fuller democracy.” This idea of a “fuller democracy” was further explored by Still in his 1944 work In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy, the subtext of which pointed to the cruel irony of soldiers of color fighting for freedom abroad that they did not experience at home.

William Grant Still’s choral ballad And They Lynched Him on a Tree is a work of great immediacy. Still wrote the work for two choruses; an all white lynch mob, and a black chorus of mourners of the murdered man. The story begins directly following the lynching. The lynch mob revels in their deed before retiring to their homes. Soon after the murdered man’s mother and a chorus of mourners emerge to grieve. At the end of the work the two choruses come together, but not in any measure of solidarity or resolution, but more so as a combined Greek chorus proffering a warning. This work is also an early example of Still’s remarkable ability to synthesize his avant-garde training with Edgard Varèse, with more conservative models of composition and his own lived experience as a black man in America. Still, although he publicly downplayed the role of race as an impediment to his career, was a keen observer of America. He completed the work while an anti-lynching bill was able to pass the House of Representatives, but unable to advance in the Senate. Still said: “It is my sincere hope that this [piece] will accomplish some good, and that it will come to the attention of those who have perhaps not thought much about the subject. Then I also pray that it will outlast the purpose for which it was written.”


Mother and Child

Originally a movement from his 1943 Suite for Violin and Piano, Still expanded Mother and Child for string orchestra shortly after. The composer wrote the suite during an immensely fruitful period after he completed his grand opera Troubled Island in 1939, but before its 1949 premiere at New York City Opera. However, 1943 was not an easy year for Still and his family. Still had moved to Los Angeles in 1934, hoping to continue his work with the film industry. He successfully established himself arranging music for movies starring the likes of Bing Crosby. But in 1943, Still walked away from the highest paying film commission he had ever received (Stormy Weather) as he felt the film’s content presented African Americans unfavorably. Racism certainly played an integral part in Still’s life, and these struggles are apparent in his compositions as an expression of his humanity.

Still reflected in 1955, “It has been equally a pleasure and a challenge to be colored and to be composing serious music in the United States: a pleasure, because it is exciting to be competing in a new field; a challenge, because there are always problems to be met and conquered.”

​Poem for Orchestra
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William Grant Still is known for his gorgeous melodies, lush orchestration, and dynamic storytelling, but Poem for Orchestra begins in a vicious, rushed, aggressive state. No doubt World War II weighed heavily on Still, and he called on some of the dissonant chord structures and jarring orchestration techniques he learned from his mentor, the avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse. But ultimately the piece softens, blossoming into one of the most serene and aspirational melodies of Still’s entire compositional output. While not explicitly programmatic, the work is based on the poem printed below by Verna Arvey, Still’s wife and collaborator. Poem for Orchestra was commissioned for the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra by the Fynette H. Kulas American Composer’s Fund and was first performed on December 7, 1944.

Soul-sick and weary,
Man stands on the rim of a desolate world.
Then from the embers of a dying past
Springs an immortal hope.
Resolutely evil is uprooted and thrust aside;
A shining temple stands
Where once greed and lust for power flourished.
Earth is young again, and on the wings of its re-birth
Man draws closer to God.

Troubled Island Suite
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William Grant Still had already achieved numerous milestones by the time Troubled Island premiered at New York City Opera in 1949 to 22 curtain calls on opening night. Often referred to as “the Dean of African American composers,” Still broke ground as the first African American to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra, as well as the first to conduct a major orchestra. Troubled Island was the first grand opera by an African American to be produced at a major US opera house.  
 
Set in Haiti in 1791, Troubled Island depicts the rise and fall of Jean Jacques Dessalines (1758-1806). Born into slavery, Dessalines led a successful revolt and declared himself Emperor, only to be assassinated by his opponents. Langston Hughes wrote the libretto, with additional text by pianist and poet Verna Arvey, Still’s wife.
 
The Suite traces material from Acts I and II, with featured solos for concertmaster and principal violist, assuming the roles of Claire and Celeste.

Tabakova, Dobrinka

Concerto for Cello and Strings
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“Although there are three movements in the concerto, I prefer to think of it as one seamless form- a journey. Continuing a personal exploration of block structures, the first movement presents a dialogue between very turbulent and angular material and a more still, folk-reminiscent theme decorated with expressive grace notes, this eventually reaches a conclusion with a chorale-like idea, rooted in the slower theme of this opening. The second movement begins with a theme based on a pentatonic mode in the solo cello, which slowly becomes more embellished and is transformed into a series of rich chord progressions. The initial theme remains interweaved throughout the movement, though less obviously towards the end. The semiquaver theme of the first movement is the trigger for the main theme in the finale. This new idea takes the angular character of the opening theme and transforms it into a more joyful version, over which the solo line glides and leads towards the final resolution.

“This concerto, written for Kristine Blaumane and Amsterdam Sinfonietta, has been commissioned by the Amsterdamse Cello Biënnale and was made possible with the generous support from the Eduard van Beinum Stichting.” 

Tonight’s performance of Dobrinka Tabakova’s concerto is generously underwritten by the Elizabeth and Michael Sorel Organization. This is the US premiere of her Concerto for Cello and Strings. Program notes courtesy of the composer’s website.

Taylor, S. Coleridge

(1875-1912) - London-born composer, conductor, and violinist S. Coleridge Taylor studied violin performance and composition at the Royal College of Music beginning in 1893. He incorporated black musical idioms into his works, which encompass symphonies, opera, choral and chamber music. The “Hiawatha Trilogy,” for which he is most remembered, began with the first section, “The Wedding Feast” composed while he was still a conservatory student. It was performed in November 1898 at the Royal College.  Its freshness, thematic material and innovative rhythms won immediate approval and soon was a favorite of many leading choral societies of England. The second section, “The Death of Minnehaha” was composed and performed in 1899, requested by a major musical festival in North Staffordshire. The Royal Choral Society of London requested a the third section, “Hiawatha’s Departure,” and it premiered at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March 1900. Like Burleigh, Coleridge Taylor was acquainted with a wide breadth of American intellectuals and poets, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson and Alain Locke whose works he drew upon as inspiration and texts for his compositions.

Nonet in F Minor, op. 2 (1894)

​As you might guess from the opus number, Nonet in F Minor was a very early work by Taylor. The eighteen-year-old was still four years away from writing his career-making international hit Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, but much of the grandeur and sweep of that score is already present in this Nonet. The son of a Sierra Leonean physician and an English mother, the African-English composer had a meteoric rise. He toured the US multiple times and was received at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt. Taylor was also instrumental in popularizing a number of lesser known spiritual tunes, including Deep River, both in America and abroad. In four brisk movements, the Nonet is expansive chamber music scored for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Bass. The work is daring in its virtuosic moments for individual players with the breadth of a robust chamber orchestra color palette.

Romance in G Major for Violin and Orchestra

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an African-English composer and boyhood hero of William Grant Still. His Romance for Violin and Orchestra puts on display all the qualities that earned him the (at the time flattering) nicknames of "African Mahler," and "coloured Dvorak." Coleridge-Taylor's Romance is at once idyllic and regretful. Written in one continuous movement, it eschews technical displays in favor of lush harmonic and melodic beauty.
 
Keep Me From Sinking Down (for violin and orchestra)
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Coleridge-Taylor had a strong connection to both Native American stories and Negro spirituals. Perhaps his greatest composition was based on Longfellow’s Hiawatha, and many of his works incorporated Negro melodies, including his Violin Concerto. Coleridge-Taylor first heard the melody of Keep Me From Sinking Down while at the Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut. Very coincidentally, Sibelius would visit the Festival three years later and stay in the same bedroom Coleridge-Taylor had at the Stoeckel-Battell Estate.

Walker, George
(1922-2018)

Lyric for Strings (1946)

​George T. Walker was one of the most decorated American composers of all time. He was the first African American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music (Lilacs, 1996) and received Fulbright, Whitney, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and MacDowell fellowships. Also a dynamic concert pianist, he played concerti with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony, amongst others. 

Lyric for Strings is one of Walker’s earliest works, from his days as a student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. It was originally the slow movement of his first string quartet but was expanded for string orchestra. It was in this format and under the title Lament that it premiered at Curtis and was broadcast on the radio, earning immediate praise.  It carries the dedication "To my grandmother" and remains one of his most popular works to this day.  


Antifonys
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Antifonys illustrates Walker's later style. Sentimentality is replaced by a new dramatic voice, oscillating tension and release.

Warp Trio
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Triple Concerto for Piano Trio

Warp Trio’s self-composed Triple Concerto is much like their stated mission: It is NOT your traditional piano trio. The three-movement work (I and II by Joshua Henderson, III by Mikael Darmanie) bucks trends about concerto form, tempo, and instrumentation. In fact, eclecticism and virtuosity are really the binding characteristics of this work. At one moment you might hear grand piano chords reminiscent of a Rachmaninoff concerto and only moments later drift away on an island tune or fling into a bossa nova.

Movement I begins with a slow introduction and moves into a terse but expansive trio jam typical of much of their homegrown style. It is seemingly the most conventionally structured of the movements before the return of the opening material is sabotaged by full orchestral improvisation and an entirely new, unsquare dance.

Movement II starts as if it might be Radiohead, before drifting into something more Lennon and McCartney, beautifully influenced by Chopin. With a love for tritones. 

Movement III is initiated not by the orchestra or the trio, but by the drum kit, hitting sticks together as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band might jump into a tune. But it also has a classical relative in John Adams’s landmark 1986 piece, Short Ride in a Fast Machine. Unlike Adams, Darmanie only uses the metronome-like sticks for a few bars before leaping into a cadenza-like trio groove. Darmanie sees the work in three sections: House music, HipHop/RnB, and a Jazz–EDM fusion.

Williams, Evan

Dead White Man Music

The great man theory was a view of history popular in the nineteenth century that posited that society was advanced by a succession of “great men,” who influenced history through the centuries. It may come as no surprise that the majority of these men (besides notable exceptions, such as Jesus or Mohammed) were White. In recent decades such views of history have been criticized, and the contributions of women and people of color have been studied in greater detail.

However, even today, there is perhaps no better field of study to see the great man theory at work than in the classical canon. The music of long-deceased White male Europeans reigns supreme in concert and recital halls, and these men are credited with all of the stylistic progressions of Western art music. To put it bluntly, the performance and study of the canon is the performance and study of dead White man music, and that fact often feels like a barrier for female composers and composers of color.

Dead White Man Music serves as a personal reflection on this issue, and my own contribution to classical music as a young Black composer. This concerto for harpsichord draws on inspiration and influences from across the centuries: from Bach and Dowland to Julius Eastman and Nina Simone, from the baroque Folia to postminimalism and rock. Through the work I ask, What music am I called to write and who should be my models? (Written by the composer)

Dead White Man Music was commissioned by Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra with the generous support of over sixty donors through a crowdfunding campaign. The concerto was written for harpsichordist Daniel Walden. Read more of Evan's writing here. 

BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES

​​Burleigh, Harry T. 

(1866-1949) - Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, baritone, composer, arranger, and publisher H. T. Burleigh became a significant cultural figure, when he published the first solo concert spiritual, thereby professionalizing the genre both among composers and performers. In his 50-year career he wrote hundreds of concert spirituals, art songs, choral arrangements and instrumental compositions.  During his studies at the National Conservatory of Music, he influenced Antonín Dvořák’s embrace of African American and Native American musical idioms. Burleigh’s decades-long soloist career desegregated New York’s renowned St. George’s Church and Temple Emanu-El. He was a founding member of ASCAP and worked for over 30 years as an editor at G. Ricordi Music Publishing Company. His voice students were international performers including Paul Robeson, Marion Anderson and Enrico Caruso.  However Burleigh’s reach also extended to seminal early 20th-century intellectual figures such as James Weldon Johnson, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B Du Bois and Alain Locke, as well as musical and literary like Florence Price, Will Marion Cook, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Langston Hughes. Burleigh’s life was one robust both within and outside of the veil. ​

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Coltrane, Alice Turiya

(1973-2007) - “As it was in the beginning, let your music forevermore be an expression of My Divinity in a sound incarnation of Myself as nadabrahma. For, eternally, divine music shall always be the sound of peace, the sound of love, the sound of life, and the sound of bliss.”
—Alice Coltrane, Endless Wisdom I
​(Recommended Reading: Franya J. Berkman’s landmark 2010 biography Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane)


Mahler, Alma Schindler 

(1879-1964) - Many a program note on Alma start with her husbands: a composer, an architect, a playwright. But Alma, clearly, refused to be defined by patriarchal structures and expectations. The exact chronology of her compositions is difficult to ascertain because her manuscripts are undated, but 14 of her songs were published during her lifetime (1910/15/24). It has been theorized that all of her songs were composed before her 1901 marriage to fellow composer Gustav Mahler. Indeed, a two-composer household was unacceptable to Gustav. He wrote in a letter to Alma, “How do you envision such a marriage between two composers? Have you any idea how ridiculous and ultimately degrading in our own eyes such a peculiar rivalry would become?” Just days earlier she had written in her diary, “...then I must exert my every effort right now toward securing the place to which I am entitled...namely, the artistic one. He [Gustav] thinks absolutely nothing of my art -- and a great deal of his own -- and I think absolutely nothing of his art and a great deal of my own.” 

Today only 17 of Alma’s songs remain, but according to her memoirs she also worked on instrumental pieces and an opera in her youth. It is a great loss that so little remains, but that makes it all the more important that we celebrate what we do have.


Schumann, Clara Wieck

(1819-1896) - Perhaps the most frequent critical response to Clara’s lieder was how “manly” they were─for certain a backhanded compliment. It was not until critics could not discern who wrote which songs in Clara and Robert’s joint collection Liebesfrühling that it was tacitly admitted that their work was of the same quality. 

One of the foremost pianists of her time, Clara performed more than 1,300 public recitals over the span of her 60-year career (1830-1891). She pioneered the piano recital model that continues to this day (“Bach or Scarlatti, a larger opus such as a Beethoven sonata, followed by shorter pieces by Brahms, Chopin, Mendelssohn or Schumann”). Clara was further well known for preluding, a now lost art form whereby pianists improvised in between pieces as a bridge of sorts. 

During Clara’s career virtuoso pianists were expected not just to present works by other composers, but also their own compositions. Clara Wieck began composing prolifically at the age of 9. There was a distinct shift in her writing post-1940 that downplayed virtuosity, replacing it with a greater emotional depth and breadth of character. Tonight’s songs are chosen from that later period. 

Clara saw herself as an advocate for Robert’s music. After his death in 1856, she stopped composing. This was, in part, financial, she needed to concertize more regularly to provide for her seven children. In total, she wrote 23 works with opus numbers, an additional two dozen songs, a piano concerto, and a number of solo piano works.


Taylor, S. Coleridge

(1875-1912) - London-born composer, conductor, and violinist S. Coleridge Taylor studied violin performance and composition at the Royal College of Music beginning in 1893. He incorporated black musical idioms into his works, which encompass symphonies, opera, choral and chamber music. The “Hiawatha Trilogy,” for which he is most remembered, began with the first section, “The Wedding Feast” composed while he was still a conservatory student. It was performed in November 1898 at the Royal College. Its freshness, thematic material and innovative rhythms won immediate approval and soon was a favorite of many leading choral societies of England. The second section, “The Death of Minnehaha” was composed and performed in 1899, requested by a major musical festival in North Staffordshire. The Royal Choral Society of London requested a the third section, “Hiawatha’s Departure,” and it premiered at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March 1900. Like Burleigh, Coleridge Taylor was acquainted with a wide breadth of American intellectuals and poets, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson and Alain Locke whose works he drew upon as inspiration and texts for his compositions.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

The Institute for Composer Diversity, housed at the State University of New York at Fredonia, is a broad-based center dedicated to the celebration, education, and advocacy of music created by composers from historically underrepresented groups through online tools, research-based resources, and sponsored initiatives.