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

Parsons Playlists: Halloween 2020

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Welcome to the third installment of Parsons Playlists, back after a hiatus and featuring a Halloween playlist from Music Library Associate, Melanie Armstrong.

Halloween 2020

Melanie says: “Since Halloween 2020 is going to be a bit … different, I – your friendly neighborhood Music Library Associate – made a playlist in that vein.
I’ve left out some of the more obvious Halloween playlist picks (like “Thriller“, or “Spooky“, or “Ghostbusters“), and hope you’ll enjoy this idiosyncratic selection! I’ve included some songs for the Halloween blue moon (the first Halloween blue moon since 1944) among other things.”

Otis Redding – “Trick or Treat”

Billie Eilish – “Bury A Friend”

billie eilish

The Cramps – “I Was A Teenage Werewolf”

Missy Elliott – “Get Ur Freak On”

Missy Elliott - Get Ur Freak On

The Marcels – “Blue Moon”

(This doo-wop version is arguably the most famous version of “Blue Moon”, but it was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934!)

King Harvest – “Dancing in the Moonlight”

blue moon

Electric Light Orchestra – “Strange Magic”

Squirrel Nut Zippers – “Hell”

Vintage Halloween Dance

Van Halen – “Runnin’ With The Devil”
(in tribute to Eddie Van Halen who passed away this month)

Talking Heads – “Psycho Killer”

The Police – “Murder By Numbers”

Halloween dogs

The White Stripes – “Little Ghost”

Louis Armstrong – “The Skeleton in the Closet”

Le Squellette Joyeux

The Divine Comedy – “The Happy Goth”

They Might Be Giants – “Dead”

Groovie Ghoulies – “(She’s My) Vampire Girl”

Black Cat and Jack O'Lantern

Yoko Ono – “Yes, I’m A Witch”

Eels – “My Beloved Monster”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer stake

Billy Joel – “The Stranger”
(a song about masks feels EXTRA appropriate at the moment … plus fun with metaphors!)

R.E.M. – “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”

And here it all is as a Spotify playlist for you:

Plus here’s a bonus (not available on Spotify) cheese-tacular Halloween artifact from the 1980s featuring the inimitable Tim Curry:

We sincerely hope that everyone has a safe & fun Halloween (despite the particular weirdness of 2020).

jack o lantern

YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU94rco57Zew8nvrzDii5yoNOsWmj69_s

Black Composers Matter : Margaret Bonds

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Margaret Bonds
(March 3, 1913 – April 26, 1972)

Margaret Bonds

Margaret Bonds was born in Chicago, Illinois. She began musical studies at an early age with her mother, whose home in New York City became a gathering place for Black writers, artists and musicians such as Will Marion Cook, Lillian Evanti, and Florence Price. Young Margaret showed musical promise early and composed her first first work, Marquette Street Blues, at the age of five.

In high school, Bonds studied piano and composition with Florence Price and William Dawson. She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Northwestern University in 1933 and 1934. In 1936, she founded the Allied Arts Academy to create opportunities for African American children in Chicago. She moved to New York in 1939, where she attended the Julliard School of Music and became involved in the Harlem Renaissance and civil rights movement, championing and advocating for fellow African American artists.

During the 1930s, Bonds was active as a concert pianist and accompanist. In 1933, she became the first Black soloist to perform with the Chicago Symphony in a performance of Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement.

Bonds frequently collaborated with writer, poet and activist Langston Hughes including settings of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1946 text by Hughes) and “Three Dream Portraits” (1959 text by Hughes).

Her most frequently performed work is a cantata called The Ballad of the Brown King, which was first performed in 1954. It also features Hughes’ poetry and tells the story of the Three Wise Men from the perspective of the African king, Balthazar. The composition includes a combination of European, Jazz and Calypso four-part hymn and gospel music.

Bonds also composed art songs, popular songs, piano music, ballets, music for the stage, orchestral music, choral music and arrangements of spirituals. Some of her arrangements of spirituals were commissioned and recorded by Leontyne Price during the 1960s.

Ballad of the Brown King

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

* The Ballad of the Brown King and Selected Songs (CD)

* Watch and Pray: Spirituals and Art Songs by African American Women Composers (CD)

* Art Songs and Spirituals by African American Women Composers (Score)

* Soulscapes: Piano Music by African American Women (CD)

* Bonds, Margaret (Reference entry from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History : The Black Experience in the Americas available online)

And here is an NPR Music piece on Bonds from 2013 in celebration of her centennial:

Black Composers Matter

Black Composers Matter: William Grant Still

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William Grant Still
(May 11, 1895 – December 3, 1978)

William Grant Still by Carl Van Vechten

William Grant Still is often referred to as the “Dean of African American Composers.” During his lifetime, he composed nearly 200 works including five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, and more than thirty choral works, plus art songs, chamber music and works for solo instruments.

Still was born in Woodville, MS in 1895 and grew up in Little Rock, AR. He showed a great interest in music and learned to play violin, clarinet, saxophone, double bass, cello and viola.

He studied music theory and counterpoint at the Oberlin Conservatory of MusicHe also studied privately with the modern French composer Edgard Varèse and the American composer George Whitefield Chadwick.

In 1916 Still worked with W.C. Handy‘s band. In 1918 he joined the United States Navy to serve in World War I. After the war he went to Harlem, where he continued to work for Handy. During his time in Harlem, Still was involved with other important cultural figures of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Countee Cullen, and is considered to be part of that movement.

He worked with various bandleaders and in pit orchestras as well as becoming an arranger of popular songs during the 1920s and 1930s. He also arranged music for films like Pennies From Heaven (1936) and Lost Horizon(1937). Still’s prolific and influential career as a commercial arranger is only beginning to be explored.

Still’s first major orchestral composition, Symphony No. 1 “Afro-American”, was performed in 1931 by the Rochester Philharmonic. It was the first time the complete score of a work by an African American was performed by a major orchestra.

In 1949 his opera Troubled Island, originally completed in 1939, about Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the Haitian revolution, was performed by the New York City Opera. It was the first opera by an American to be performed by that company and the first by an African American to be performed by a major opera company.

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.26776

If you’d like to learn more about William Grant Still, here are a few items from the Music Library’s collection:

* William Grant Still by Catherine Parsons Smith (book)

* The American Scene William Grant Still (Streaming audio via Classical Music Library)

* Africa: A Suite for Piano (Score)

* Troubled Island: An Opera by William Grant Still (available as a Score and as a CD)

* Symphony No. 1 “Afro American” (available on CD, as Streaming Audio, and as a Score)

Still at the piano later in life

Black Composers Matter

Black Composers Matter: Errollyn Wallen

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Errollyn Wallen
b. April 10, 1958

Errollyn Wallen was born in Belize and moved to London with her family at the age of two.

She trained as a dancer at the Maureen Lyons School of Dancing and the Urdang Academy before taking dance classes at the Dance Theater of Harlem and went on to study music and composition at the universities of London and Cambridge.

According to Grove Music Online, “Wallen draws inspiration from a great diversity of sources in her music. It is above all characterized by a deeply expressive lyricism … and a delight in vibrant dance rhythms …” Her work is also influenced by avant-garde classical music as well as popular songwriting and includes operas, chamber music, and choral music as well as orchestral music.

In 1998, she was the first Black female composer to have an orchestral work – her Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra – presented at the BBC Proms. In 2020, she was commissioned to create a new version of “Jerusalem” (which is considered sort of a standby British national anthem) for the Last Night of the Proms.

Her works Principia and Spirit in Motion were commissioned for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympic Games and their première was watched by a capacity audience of 80,000 people and broadcast to a billion people around the world.

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

* The Errollyn Wallen Songbook (Score)

* I Wouldn’t Normally Say: Piano Solo (Score)

* Errollyn Wallen (Reference entry via Oxford Music Online)

And as always, YouTube (see video below of Wallen performing some of her own songs), Spotify, her official website, and other social media!

Black Composers Matter

Black Composers Matter : Daniel Bernard Roumain

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Daniel Bernard Roumain (aka DBR)
b. 1970

Haitian-American composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (aka DBR) was born in Skokie, Illinois. His family moved to Fort Lauderdale Florida subsequently. As a first-generation American, DBR’s family home was filled with Haitian folk music and his family encouraged him to listen to a variety of classical and contemporary music.

He discovered the violin at age 5. In junior high school, he formed his own rock / hip-hop band playing guitar and synthesizer.
He majored in music composition at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music and continued his studies at the University of Michigan where he earned both his masters and doctoral degrees.

DBR is an innovative composer, performer, activist and educator. His works blend hip-hop, funk, rock and classical music into genre defying, energetic and experimental forms. He has collaborated with many orchestras and chamber ensembles around the world. His eclectic musical interests are reflected in the fact that he has collaborated with all manner of artists like Philip Glass, Lady Gaga, Bill T. Jones, DJ Spooky, and Cassandra Wilson.

DBR music workshop photo

DBR taking an unconventional approach to violin playing in a 2012 workshop .

Here’s a quote from Roumain’s website that gives a nice overview of the width and breadth of his work to date:
“Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic, urban, and African-American music influences, DBR takes his genre-bending music beyond the proscenium. He is a composer of chamber, orchestral, and operatic works; has won an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Composition for his collaborations with ESPN; featured as keynote performer at technology conferences; and created large scale, site-specific musical events for public spaces.”

And here is link to an NPR piece about the 2017 premiere of We Shall Not Be Moved – an opera about the 1985 bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia :


If you’d like to learn more about DBR, here are some items from our collection:

* Revolutionary Rhythm (CD)

* Liasons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano (CD and also Score)

* Blues Dialogues: Music By Black Composers (CD)

* Homegoings (Documentary Film scored by Roumain, available to stream via Alexander Street Press)

Homegoings film poster

* You can also follow DBR on social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Spotify.

Black Composers Matter

Black Composers Matter: Zenobia Powell Perry

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Editor’s note: In conjunction with the current “Black Composers Matter” display at the Music Library, I – your friendly neighborhood Music Library Associate – had a great time researching for it and I thought it might be nice to showcase the Black Composers highlighted therein. Things that are linked will take you to additional relevant information or to OneSearch for library-owned materials.

****

Zenobia Powell Perry
(October 3, 1908 – January 17, 2004)

Perry was born in Boley, Oklahoma into a well-educated, middle class family. Her grandfather, who had been enslaved, sang her traditional spirituals as a child, which later influenced her work.

When she was about 7 years old, she met Booker T. Washington and sang for him at his appearance in Boley on August 22, 1915. She won a piano competition in 1919, and also learned to play violin.

Perry went on to study music at Berryman Conservatory in Nebraska and the Hampton Institute in Virginia. In 1935, she started at the Tuskegee Institute where she studied with composer William L. Dawson, who encouraged her to compose original work. She graduated from Tuskegee in 1938.

After Tuskegee, Perry became part of a Black teacher training program which was headed by Eleanor Roosevelt (who helped to fund Perry’s graduate studies).

Perry (left) with music students and teachers in 1949.

Perry worked as a professor at several historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), including Central State University in Ohio.

She did not seriously begin composing until she was in her 40s. Her music is classical with some jazz and folk influence. She wrote an opera Tawana House (first performed in 1987 and revived in 2014), as well as works for voice, orchestra, band and a mass.

American Composer Zenobia Powell Perry

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

* American Composer Zenobia Powell Perry: Race and Gender in the 20th Century by Jeannie Gayle Pool (Book)

* Soulscapes: Piano Music by African American Women (CD)

* Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music (1893-1990) edited by Helen Walker-Hill (Score)

* You can also find her works by searching on streaming services like Spotify or Youtube!

Black Composers Matter