Monthly Archives: November 2020

Black Composers Matter: Adolphus Hailstork

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Adolphus Hailstork
b. April 17, 1941

Adolphus Hailstork

American composer and professor of music Adolphus Hailstork was born in Rochester, New York in 1941 and grew up in Albany, New York. He began his musical studies with piano lessons as a child and began composing during the 1950s as a high school student.

He studied at Howard University (1963) and the Manhattan School of Music (1965/1966). After service in the US Armed Forces in Germany (1966–1968), he returned to the United States and pursued his doctoral degree at Michigan State University in Lansing (1971).

Hailstork has served as professor at Youngstown State University in Ohio (1971-1977), as well as professor of music and Composer-in-Residence at Virginia’s Norfolk State University (1977-2000). He is currently a professor of music and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Hailstork received a star on Norfolk’s Legends of Music Walk of Fame in 2017. The Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony and National Symphony Orchestra have all performed works by Dr. Hailstork over the years and he was proclaimed a Virginia Cultural Laureate in 1992.

Adolphus Hailstork

Hailstork writes in a variety of forms and styles: symphonic works and tone poems for orchestra; a piano concerto; numerous chamber works; duos for such combinations as horn and piano, clarinet and piano, flute and piano, and others; a large number of songs including songs for soprano, baritone, mezzo-soprano, some with piano and others with orchestra or chamber group; band works and band transcriptions, and many pieces for piano.

According to his website, “Hailstork’s newest works include THE WORLD CALLED (based on Rita Dove’s poem TESTIMONIAL), a work for soprano, chorus and orchestra commissioned by the Oratorio Society of Virginia (premiered in May 2018) and STILL HOLDING ON (February 2019) an orchestra work commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is currently working on his Fourth Symphony, and A KNEE ON A NECK (tribute to George Floyd) for chorus and orchestra.”

If you’d like to learn more about Adolphus Hailstork, here are some items from the Music Library’s collection:

* Hailstork, Adolphus (Reference entry from The Grove Dictionary of American Music via Oxford Online)

* Dance Like the Wind: Music of Today’s Black Composers (CD)

* Symphonic Brotherhood: The Music of African-American Composers (CD)

* Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (Score)

* Anthology of Art Songs by Black American Composers (Score)

* African-American Organ Music Anthology (Score)

* Musical Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers (Book)

* “An Interview With Adolphus Hailstork” (1999 journal article by Gene Brooks from The Choral Journal)

Black Composers Matter

Black Composers Matter: Tania León

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Tania León
b. May 14, 1943

Tania León

Tania León is a Cuban-born composer, conductor, and educator. She was born in Havana, Cuba in 1943 and began studying piano at the age of four.

She earned her B.A. and M.A. in Music in her native city (BA 1963, MA 1964) and settled in New York in 1967. She attended New York University where she studied composition (BS 1971, MS 1975). Soon after her arrival in New York, she became the rehearsal pianist for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, one of the company’s founding members and had a long and productive association with them as pianist, conductor and composer.

León has played important roles at various other New York institutions, including the Brooklyn Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra and its Sonidos de las Américas festivals, and the New York Philharmonic, where she served as New Music Advisor. Additionally, she conducted on Broadway (perhaps most notably for The Wiz in the late 1970s).

León’s compositional style absorbed American influences such as jazz and gospel. Her work also includes textual and rhythmic elements from her African and Cuban cultural heritage alongside contemporary classical techniques. Grove Music Online refers to her works as “technically demanding, and characterized by dense textures, angular melodies, dissonant harmonies and colourful orchestration.”

Her works include ballets, chamber music, orchestral music, music for solo instruments, vocal music, electro-acoustic music and also an opera, Scourge of Hyacinths.
According to León’s website, “Recent commissions include: the score for the opera, The Little Rock Nine, with a libretto by Thulani Davis, and historical research by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., commissioned by the University of Central Arkansas‘s College of Fine Arts and Communication.” Here’s a 2017 article about a performance of excerpts from this work-in-progress: https://arktimes.com/rock-candy/2017/09/26/a-glimpse-of-the-little-rock-nine-opera-at-uca.

Tania Leon and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Tania León & Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in conversation at a UCA event in 2017.

Tania León is also the founder and artistic director of Composers Now, a non-profit dedicated to empowering all living composers and celebrating the diversity of their voices.

If you’d like to learn more about Tania León here are some resources available in the Music Library:

* In Her Own Words: Conversations with Composers in the United States (Book)

* Indígena (CD)

* Batá: for Orchestra (Score)

* Pet’s Suite: Flute and Piano (Score)

* Mística: for Solo Piano (Score)

* The Sensual Nature of Sound: 4 composers, Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros (Streaming Video via Kanopy)

* In Motion (CD)

Black Composers Matter

Black Composers Matter: J. Rosamond Johnson

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J. Rosamund Johnson
(August 11, 1873 – November 11, 1954)

J. Rosamond Johnson

John Rosamond Johnson was one of the most successful African American composers of the early 20th century.

Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 11, 1873. He began playing the piano at age four, studied at the New England Conservatory from 1890-1896. He began his career as a music teacher in Jacksonville public schools but in 1899 moved to New York with his brother, James Weldon Johnson, to pursue a career in show business.

The Johnson brothers established a song writing partnership with Robert “Bob” Cole, a lyricist and vaudeville entertainer. Their working relationship lasted until Cole’s death in 1911 and would prove to be quite profitable, producing two popular all-black operettas on Broadway, The Shoo-Fly Regiment (1906) and The Red Moon (1908).

Johnson is best known today as the composer of “Lift Every Voice And Sing” also known in the U.S. as the “Black National Anthem” because of its power in voicing a cry for liberation and affirmation for African-American people. His brother James Weldon wrote the lyrics and the song was first performed by 500 schoolchildren on Lincoln’s birthday (February 12th) in 1900. The song is featured in 39 different Christian hymnals, and is sung in churches across North America.

The_Obamas_sing_with_Smokey_Robinson,_Joan_Baez_and_others,_2014

President Barack Obama and the First Family join Smokey Robinson, Joan Baez and other performers on stage in the East Room of the White House as they sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at the conclusion of “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement,” Feb. 9, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Johnson also wrote popular songs, musicals, works for piano and wore other musical hats as well, working as a vaudeville and Broadway performer. He also founded a school in Harlem called the New York Music School Settlement for Colored People.

As an editor, Johnson collected four important works of traditional African-American songs. The first two of these song collections he compiled along with his brother James: The Book of American Negro Spirituals (1925) and The Second Book of Negro Spirituals (1926).

Here is a clip featuring a performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by Alicia Keys with narration by Anthony Mackie which aired during Week 1 of the NFL 2020 regular season:

If you’d like to learn more about J. Rosamond Johnson, here are some items from the Music Library’s collection:

* Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing: The Culture of Uplift, Identity, and Politics in Black Musical Theatre by Paula Marie Seniors (Ebook)

* The Book of American Negro Spirituals edited with an introduction by James Weldon Johnson; musical arrangements by J. Rosamond Johnson (Score)

* May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem by Imani Perry (Book)

* “Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Concert” University of Richmond, Schola Cantorum (Recording of concert recorded in Camp Concert Hall at UR, on January 20, 2003).

Black Composers Matter

Black Composers Matter: Courtney Bryan

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Courtney Bryan
b. 1982

Courtney Bryan was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. She obtained her Bachelor of Music from Oberlin College, her Master of Music from Rutgers University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia University.

The New York Times has described her as “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests”. Her music ranges from solo works to large ensembles in the new music and jazz idioms, film scores, and collaborations with dancers, visual artists, writers, and actors, and is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryan’s recent compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation.

Bryan is currently an Assistant Professor of Music in the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University, and the Mary Carr Patton Composer-in-Residence with the Jacksonville Symphony. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2019 Bard College Freehand Fellow, and is currently a 2019-20 recipient of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow.

Courtney Bryan - Portrait photo by Arielle Pentes

Courtney Bryan – Portrait photo by Arielle Pentes

Here’s some information about a couple of Courtney Bryan’s current projects (from the American Academy in Rome’s events page):

Awakening is a one-act opera based on an imagined contemporary woman who transforms herself out of an oppressive situation with the guidance of the spirits of three nineteenth-century Black women religious leaders and freedom fighters: Rebecca Cox Jackson, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman.

Bryan’s recent recording project, Sounds of Freedom, is inspired by an experimental music tradition stemming from the Black Arts Movement in New Orleans.

If you’d like to learn more about her, here are some resources from the library’s collection and from around the web:

* Courtney Bryan’s website

* “Soli Deo Gloria” (Streaming audio of a recording available via Naxos Music)

* “An Interview with Courtney Bryan” (2013 journal article by Tyehimba Jess from Callaloo via Project Muse)

* Courtney Bryan on Piano: “Songs of Laughing, Smiling, and Crying” (2015 journal article by Hermine Pinson from Callaloo via Project Muse)

* “Black Lives Matter in the Orchestra Pit, Too” (Article from The Village Voice by Rajul Punjabi, July 8, 2016)

* “For Black Lives Matter, Classical Music Steps In” (Article in the New York Times by William Robin, July 10, 2016)

* Courtney Bryan’s YouTube channel

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Black Composers Matter

Black Composers Matter : Dolores White

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Dolores White
b. 1932

Dolores White

Dolores White was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1932. She earned her Bachelors in Music from Oberlin College and her Masters in Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music in Performance and Composition.

White held positions at several colleges, universities, and arts organizations, including Wooster College; Hartt School of Music; Cleveland Music School; Karamu House; and the Metropolitan Campus of Cuyahoga Community College, where she served as assistant professor of music. Since her retirement from teaching in 2000, White has continued to compose vocal and instrumental works.

Centered in American and European classical elements, White fashions music that reaches into the rich resources of American traditions while also drawing on ethnic and international materials.

In addition to composing, White has conducted numerous workshops and lectures on such topics as women in music, Afro-Cuban music and dance, and African American arts.

“As a composer I try to create works of quality and excellence. Works that are the result of high intentions, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution. The works represent the wise choices from many alternatives. I like to explore combinations of sounds using different textures and timbres. I take risks, I dream big and I use humor in my works in different ways which help to keep my optimistic views.” – quote from Dolores White on her website doloreswhite.com

If you’d like to learn more about her, here are some works by White from the Music Library’s collection:

* The New American Scene: 5 Distinguished African American Composers (CD)

* Dark Fire: 20th Century Music for Piano (CD)

* Blues Dialogues: Music by Black Composers (CD)

* The HistoryMakers Video Oral History With Dolores White (Streaming video)

Here is a Youtube clip featuring a couple of Dolores White’s art songs:

Black Composers Matter

New CDs added – October 2020

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New CDs for October 2020