Pauline Oliveros was a maverick in the field of contemporary classical music, particularly experimental and electronic music. She explored unconventional techniques and approaches to classical instruments, expanding their sonic possibilities. She’s widely known for developing the concept of “Deep Listening.”

Para ver una versión en español de este video, haz clic aquí.

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Pauline Oliveros era una aventurera en la música clásica contemporánea, especialmente en la música experimental y electrónica. Exploró técnicas y usos de los instrumentos, ampliando sus posibilidades sonoras.Sobre todo, ella es conocida por desarrollar el concepto de escuchar profundamente, o Deep Listening.

To watch a version of this video in English, click here.

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Les presentamos el video de Open Ears sobre la vida y carrera de José Pablo Moncayo García, el compositor mexicano de “Huapango” y una figura destacada en el movimiento nacionalista musical de su país después de la revolución. Estudió en el Conservatorio Nacional de México y fue invitado por el director Carlos Chávez a ser percusionista en la Orquesta Sinfónica de México (más tarde conocida como la Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional). En su propia música, utilizó los modos y ritmos de la música folclórica tradicional. Tras el éxito de “Huapango” en 1941, estudió composición con Aaron Copland en Tanglewood y conoció a Leonard Bernstein y Lukas Foss. Moncayo fue nombrado Director Asistente de la Orquesta Sinfónica de México en 1945 y, al año siguiente, se convirtió en su Director Artístico. Falleció justo antes de su 46 cumpleaños en 1958, habiendo compuesto 40 obras en diversos géneros: ballet, coro, ópera, música de cámara y piezas sinfónicas. Como él decía: “Nuestra música debe ser profundamente mexicana para llegar a ser universal”.

To watch an English language version of this video, click here!

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Here’s an Open Ears video about the life and career of José Pablo Moncayo García, the Mexican composer of Huapango, and a leading figure in his country’s post- revolutionary musical nationalism movement. He studied at the National Conservatory of Mexico, and was asked by conductor Carlos Chávez to be a percussionist in the Mexico Symphony Orchestra (later known as the National Symphony Orchestra). In his own music, he used the idioms and rhythms of traditional folk music. After the success of Huapango in 1941, he studied composition with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, and met Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss. Moncayo was named Assistant Conductor of the Mexico Symphony Orchestra in 1945, and the next year, its Artistic Director. He died just before his 46th  birthday, in 1958, having written 40 works in various genres: ballet, choral, opera, film, chamber music, as well as symphonic pieces. As he said: “Our music must first be deeply Mexican in order to become universal.”

Para ver una versión en español de este video, haz clic aquí.

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Teresa Carreño was a Venezuelan pianist, soprano, composer, and conductor. Learn about her musical career, creative life, and how she has inspired generations of pianists, composers, and conductors worldwide.

Teresa Carreño fue una virtuosa pianista, soprano, compositora y directora venezolana. Es conocida como La Valquiria y La Leona del piano.

The post How Teresa Carreño Inspired Generations of Pianists, Composers, and Conductors Worldwide appeared first on Classical KUSC.

About Open Ears: So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music were underappreciated in their time, or have been nearly lost to history. That’s why KUSC is starting Open Ears, a series of stories about composers, musicians, and conductors who deserve more recognition. You can learn more and explore other articles here.

Nora Douglas Holt was a composer, singer, critic, socialite, and a deep part of the culture of the Harlem Renaissance, but sadly, very little remains of her compositions. She was born Lena Douglas, and her life – with five marriages, and enough wealth after the death of her fourth husband to allow for travel and independence – was one of charting her own path, and making her mark.

Her study of music began as a youngster, when she took piano lessons from the age of four, and played the organ in her father’s church in Kansas City. Her skills grew as she did, studying music at Western University in Quindaro, Kansas. She attended the Chicago Musical College, where in 1918, she earned a master’s degree, said to be the first African-American (let alone African-American woman) to earn a master’s in music composition in the United States.

Her thesis in Chicago, a piece for orchestra called Rhapsody on Negro Themes, was among the 200 or so works for orchestra and chamber songs that were lost when they were stolen with her other belongings from storage while she was abroad singing in Europe and Asia. Only two pieces remain, including this one, called “Negro Dance”, a work for solo piano that was fortunately published before the theft.

Samantha Ege playing “Negro Dance” (1921) by Nora Holt

When she returned from overseas, she turned her attention to music criticism, never returning to composition, or even trying to recreate the lost works. She was a music critic for the Chicago Defender, a Black daily newspaper from 1917-21, and in 1919 co-founded the National Association of Negro Musicians. During the ‘20s, she founded the magazine Music and Poetry, and became friends with members of the Harlem Renaissance, hosting and attending soirees with the leading writers and thinkers of the era. She was free-spirited, with a string of sensational divorces, known for singing her signature song “My Daddy Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)” and sometimes dancing in the nude at those parties. She studied with Nadia Boulanger in France, and then took classes at USC in the 1930s, and taught in the public schools of Los Angeles. In the ‘40s, she became an editor and music critic for the influential Black newspaper Amsterdam News. In 1945, Holt was the first African-American elected to the Music Critics Circle of New York, nominated by fellow critic/composer Virgil Thomson. She would go on to host her own classical music radio program in New York, and in 1966 participated in the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal. After a life filled with bringing the experience and enjoyment of music to others, Nora Holt died in January of 1974, at the age of 89.

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About Open Ears: So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music have been nearly lost to history or are underappreciated in their time. That’s why KUSC is starting Open Ears, a series of stories about composers, musicians, and conductors who deserve more recognition. You can learn more and explore other articles here.

You should not suffer the past. You should be able to wear it like a loose garment, take it off and let it drop.

That famous quote came from a real force in American music during the first half of the 20th century, Eva Jessye (1895–1992), who has often been called the “grand dame of Black music”. Jessye’s life is the story of an African American girl growing up in Kansas with loads of musical talent and drive. She was a singer, choral director, composer, actor, teacher, and poet—a potent combination that led her to the east coast in the early 20th-century and eventually to New York City and Harlem. Eva Jessye found herself in the middle of the creative whirlwind known as the Harlem Renaissance. With her skills and talent, she was truly in the right place at the right time. Harlem, even more than Paris in the 1920s or San Francisco in the 1960s, was, for ten or fifteen years, the place to be. The impact of the Harlem Renaissance cannot be underestimated—not just for African Americans but for the nation as a whole and the world beyond, influencing literature, poetry, culture, fashion, music, politics, and modern mores.

For more than four decades, Eva led a choir that was one of the top gospel, folk, and spiritual groups of the day. At first, they were known as the Original Dixie Jubilee Singers but they later changed the name to the Eva Jessye Choir. George Gershwin took notice and hired Eva and her singers for the authentic sound they brought to his radical new opera, Porgy and Bess. Jessye was named music director of Gershwin’s show, and she insisted that her choir be paid not only for performances but for rehearsals as well at a time when this wasn’t the norm. Porgy and Bess opened in 1935, and soon, in addition to being the choir leader, Eva also had a role in the opera, playing Strawberry Woman.

Throughout her life, Eva Jessye found herself in the midst of pivotal moments during the battle for civil rights in America. In 1936, at the end of the Porgy and Bess national tour, she and the cast protested a segregated theatre. Eventually, management gave in, and that Washington D.C. venue was integrated for the first time. Three decades later, Washington would be the site of another groundbreaking moment for the Eva Jessye Choir when they performed at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Amazing milestones in a remarkable life.

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The remarkable life of African-American composer, arranger, and singer, Harry T. Burleigh would make a wonderful movie. Imagine the scene where Antonin Dvorak overhears Burleigh’s gorgeous baritone voice singing in the halls of the National Conservatory. And he would be singing traditional spirituals, a music wholly new to the great Czech composer. Their meeting would profoundly change the course of Dvorak’s music.

Harry Burleigh’s maternal grandfather was born a slave in 1835. He eventually bought his freedom for $55 and moved his family to Erie, Pennsylvania, where young Harry was born just one year after the end of the Civil War (1866). From his grandfather, Harry is said to have inherited his beautiful voice as well as a wealth of knowledge about the Negro-Spiritual and Plantation song tradition. Young Harry’s prodigious musical gifts came to the attention of Frances MacDowell, (the mother of composer Edward) who arranged for him to attend the prestigious National Conservatory of Music in New York City. There he made the acquaintance of the conservatory’s director, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. Their auspicious meeting resulted in a new and important “American” period in Dvorak’s compositional output. Dvorak famously said: “In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.”

Burleigh would go on to be a renowned singer in New York City, landing the position of soloist at St. George’s Episcopal Church, over the objections of most of the all-white congregation. (J.P. Morgan cast the deciding “yes” vote). Burleigh remained in the choir at St. George’s for 50 years. In time, Burleigh’s singing career was eclipsed by his output of original art songs and his arrangements of Negro Spirituals. He was a founding member of ASCAP, the recipient of the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, and throughout his long life, a champion of Black music and musicians.

When he died in 1949 at the age of 82, his funeral was held at St. George’s, and was attended by more than 2,000 people. Pallbearers included jazz greats Eubie Blake and William C. Handy. Several of his works appear to this day in the official hymnals of the Episcopal Church of America, including the definitive arrangement of “Lift Every Voice and Sing!”

The post Lift Every Voice: The Inspiring Life of Harry T. Burleigh appeared first on Classical KUSC.

About Open Ears: So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music have been nearly lost to history or are underappreciated in their time. That’s why KUSC is starting Open Ears, a series of stories about composers, musicians, and conductors who deserve more recognition. You can learn more and explore other articles here.

If you know the song, I Love Life, you know the work of Mana-Zucca. Born Gizella Zuccamanof (later Zuccaman) on Christmas Day, 1891 (or 1885 or 1895, depending on the source), to Polish immigrants, Mana-Zucca changed her name to simplify her stage life. She was a piano prodigy, composer, actress, and one of the most recognizable faces from numerous ad campaigns. According to Florida International University, which is the holder of her archives, Mana-Zucca was one of the most photographed women of her time. She became known as the “Chaminade of America.”

When she was eight, Mana-Zucca made her debut with the New York Symphony Orchestra (the former rival to the New York Philharmonic), playing Beethoven’s first piano concerto. In 1914, she made her stage debut with a soprano role in Franz Lehár’s The Count of Luxembourg. She studied piano under Ferruccio Busoni, Leopold Godowsky, and Alexander Lambert, and composition under Hermann Spielter.

When she was a teenager, she and her sister Beatrice sailed across the Atlantic and eventually settled in Berlin, where her performances were very popular. She teamed up with Spanish violinist Juan Manon, eventually signing a contract to play sixty concerts with him over a three-year period in Germany and Russia.

After her stint in Europe, Mana-Zucca returned to the United States, eloping with Irwin M. Cassel. The couple split time between her home in New York City and his in Miami, Florida. He wrote the lyrics to her song I Love Life in 1923 and, after the birth of their first and only child in 1926, they put down permanent roots in Miami.

In total, Mana-Zucca composed two operas, a ballet, several orchestral works, chamber music, and a collection of 366 piano pieces called My Musical Calendar. Pianist Nanette Kaplan Solomon drew from that collection for her 2015 album, Badinage: The Piano Music of Mana-Zucca. We showcased this album as our Album of the Week, marveling at the compositional talent of a woman, successful in her day, but whose music has become lesser-known now 37 years after her death.

The post Deep Dive: The Life and Legacy of Mana-Zucca appeared first on Classical KUSC.

The story of composer and pianist Margaret Bonds is a story that, even though she died 46 years ago this month, is still unfolding. Bonds was born in Chicago in 1913. The daughter of musicians, Bonds’ parents separated when she was just two years old and she was raised by her mother. She wrote her first composition at age five, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University (although her time there as one of the only Black students was marred by racism and prejudice), and, at age 22, became the first Black soloist to appear with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Photo by Carl Van Vechten

While she experienced success as a performer and composer in the world of classical music, Bonds branched out beyond the confines of the genre. She wrote music for Cab Calloway, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Louis Armstrong, and Woody Herman as well as radio and television specials. Eventually, late in life, Bonds moved to Los Angeles where she taught at the Los Angeles Inner City Institute and at the Inner City Cultural Center and worked for the movie studios. All the while, she was also writing concert music for orchestra, solo piano, chorus, and art songs. In 1972, her Credo was performed by the LA Phil conducted by Zubin Mehta. Bonds’ lifelong friendship with poet Langston Hughes yielded numerous settings of his poetry, including some of Hughes’ most iconic poems like The Negro Speaks of Rivers and I, Too. Bonds’ daughter, Djane Richardson, referred to Hughes as “Uncle Langston.”

A telegram from Langston Hughes to Margaret Bonds | Courtesy of Georgetown Library

However, much of Bonds’ music was lost following her death in 1972. According to musicologist Helen Walker-Hill in her book From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music, of the more than 200 compositions by Margaret Bonds only 75 scores exist today. Of those 75 scores, only 47 were published during her lifetime. According to Walker-Hill, Bonds did not maintain organized files and she often sent the original copies directly to the individual for whom it was written. Her manuscripts, therefore, are likely scattered all over the country. In one case, an entire box of her scores was found sitting next to a dumpster at a book fair after, apparently, failing to find a buyer.

Bonds died four years before the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 and without leaving a will. Her only heir, daughter Djane Richardson, died in 2011 without any heirs and also without leaving a will. This has left the copyright status of much of Bonds’ work incredibly murky as it is unclear who, at this point, controls the copyrights, which remain in effect for many more decades. As a result, performances and recordings of her music are, well, complicated. One of Bonds’ largest and perhaps most important works–Montgomery Variations, written in 1965 during the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March and dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.–has never been performed. It doesn’t enter the public domain until either 2042, 2060, or 2085, depending on your interpretation of the law.

A program for Margaret Bonds’s solo piano recital | Courtesy of Georgetown Library

Fortunately, we do have access to some of Bonds’ music. Her fantasia on the spiritual Wade in the Water, which she titled Troubled Water, has been recorded many times. The piece is in regular rotation on Classical KUSC. Her Christmas cantata, The Ballad of the Brown King, which sets the poetry of Langston Hughes, was performed recently at Georgetown University where Bonds’ archives are kept. Her Easter cantata, Simon Bore the Cross (one of the pieces found in that box by the dumpster), received its world premiere in February 2018 at the Kennedy Center. (Unpaid student musicians performing a free concert help to diminish the copyright complications.)

And so the story of Margaret Bonds continues. 46 years after her death, her music is still a discovery for most audiences. She faced racism every day of her life (at the time she was attending Northwestern University, Black women weren’t allowed in the pool) and she said even more challenging than her experience as a Black woman in the Civil Rights Era was the prejudices she faced as a woman in classical music. In a 1964 interview, Bonds said, “Women are expected to be wives, mothers, and do all the nasty things in the community (Oh, I do them). And if a woman is cursed with having talent too, then she keeps apologizing for it. … It really is a curse, in a way, because instead of working 12 hours a day like other women, you work 24.”

Explore the music of Margaret Bonds with some recommendations below:

Troubled Water: Bonds made several different arrangements of this piece–the original is for solo piano

The Ballad of the Brown King: A good performance here, but for some reason the camera is positioned in the choir, so you only have a view of the conductor. Also, put your YouTube settings on autoplay if you want to hear all nine movements.

You Can Tell the World: This wonderful performance from SongFest at the Colburn School highlights Bonds’ really imaginative writing for the piano.

He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands: Bonds’ arrangement as sung by Leontyne Price. Need I say more?

Spring Will Be So Sad: A song Bonds wrote with Harold Dickinson. Notice the quote of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro at the beginning.

The post Open Ears: The Endlessly Unfolding Story of Margaret Bonds appeared first on Classical KUSC.

When it came to spirituals, Undine Smith Moore was one of the finest American composers and teachers in the 20th century. The granddaughter of former slaves, Moore was born in Virginia in 1904 and by age seven was learning to play the piano. Eventually she would end up back home in Virginia as a professor at Virginia State University, but first, there were a number of stops along the way.

Fisk University in Nashville was the place for her to learn and grow as a young pianist and composer. She became the first student at Fisk to get a scholarship to attend Juilliard. Despite a somewhat specialized pursuit of spirituals and folk tunes, there was much for her to learn at New York’s Juilliard Music School. There she developed a mastery of piano, voice, and composition. Moore is credited with over 100 compositions during her career. More importantly, she became a superb teacher, mentor, and speaker who once said that she was “a teacher who composes, rather than a composer who teaches.”

Her love of teaching and working with music students ran deep as she stacked up teaching degrees from the likes of Indiana University, Columbia University, Carleton College, Virginia Union University, and Virginia State University. Along the way, she taught opera singer Camilla Williams and jazz legend, Billy Taylor. Her oratorio Scenes from the Life of a Martyr, honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., premiered at Carnegie Hall and was later nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

After an incredible career teaching generations of future musicians, it’s no wonder why Moore is often called “the Dean of Black Women Composers”.

The post Open Ears: Get to Know “the Dean of Black Women Composers” appeared first on Classical KUSC.

About Open Ears: So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music have been nearly lost to history or are underappreciated in their time. That’s why KUSC is starting Open Ears, a series of stories about composers, musicians, and conductors who deserve more recognition. You can learn more and explore other articles here.

Every human being sometimes needs a kind of spiritual dialogue with the infinite, he needs to dream of that ever-moving immaterial beauty of poetry or music, recreating with colors or sonorities the mysterious impressions that awaken in his soul. -María Luisa Anido

Here’s one of the most famous pieces ever written for the guitar.

Recuerdos de la Alhambra, by Francisco Tárrega, reflects the emotional soul of the instrument. It’s also extremely difficult to play. A good performance of this piece, like the one above, requires equal parts spontaneity and control. To pull that off without sounding aimless or overwrought is nearly impossible, but when an artist does it, the audience is transported.

María Luisa Anido was such an artist. Born in the Morón province of Buenos Aires in 1907, Anido started playing guitar at age 10. She took to the instrument extremely quickly and within a few months, her father realized she deserved a great instrument. He bought her a guitar made in 1864 that had once belonged to Francisco Tárrega.

Composing is a wonderful task because of the sincerity it carries within, because of the act of creation […] because it reveals the greatest depths of the human soul. -María Luisa Anido

But performing wasn’t enough for Anido. At age 20, she composed her first piece of music: Barcarola. She sent a copy of the score to the Catalan guitar virtuoso Miguel Llobet, who quickly wrote back, saying, “I have read and played your Barcarola; the voices are carried magnificently with admirable taste of their natural characteristics; the tone colours are perfect. Bravo, very well done. I think you should continue writing your excellent inspirations.”

Anido did. She became one of the leading guitar performer-composers of the 20th century–and one of the only women. Known as “The Lady of the Guitar,” or to fellow Spanish-speaking friends and fans, “Mimita,” María Luisa Anido studied with Llobet and eventually formed a guitar duo with him–one of the first-ever such ensembles that achieved any kind of success.

María Luisa Anido with Miguel Llobet

In the 1950s, Anido made her London debut, performing at Wigmore Hall. She would also spend several years performing and teaching in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It is from that time that we get one of just a few videos available of Anido performing.

Here’s an audio-only video of María Luisa Anido performing her composition El Misachico, also known as Procesión Coya, which Anido dedicated to her mother.

And what about that very first composition by María Luisa Anido? Here it is:

The post Open Ears: Discover Argentine Prodigy María Luisa Anido appeared first on Classical KUSC.

Jester Hairston was born in 1901 in Bellows Creek, North Carolina, near the plantation where his grandparents had been slaves. Not long after he was born, his family moved to the steel mill town of Homestead, Pennsylvania. Later on, Hairston said, “There’s nothing to do there but work in steel mills. That’s the reason I got out of there as quickly as I could.”

Hairston studied at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Tufts University, and Juilliard. After Julliard, he became the assistant director of the Hall Johnson Choir in New York and it was there that he developed his interest in African-American spirituals.

He trained choirs for radio and Broadway musicals. When he came to Hollywood in 1936, he sang and appeared with the Hall Johnson Choir in the movie The Green Pastures, the story of a preacher in a small church in Louisiana.

In 1943, Hairston formed his own choir and throughout the 40’s he arranged and conducted choral music for background use in films. When filmmakers stopped using large choral ensembles, Hairston worked as a character actor on radio and television and in movies.

This is one of his most popular arrangements:

One of Hairston’s original compositions is so authentic-sounding that it’s often mistaken for a traditional tune. He wrote it for the 1963 movie Lilies of the Field. In this scene, Sidney Poitier is teaching the song to a group of nuns. The voice is not Poitier; it was dubbed by Jester Hairston.

The post Open Ears: From Steel Mills to the Silver Screen appeared first on Classical KUSC.

About Open Ears: So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music were underappreciated in their time, or have been nearly lost to history. That’s why KUSC is starting Open Ears, a series of stories about composers, musicians, and conductors who deserve more recognition. You can learn more and explore other articles here.

If I were to tell you that the Berlin Philharmonic had invited an American journalist to conduct a concert, you’d probably think it was some kind of publicity stunt.

But, here’s the thing: the Berlin Philharmonic did invite an American journalist to conduct a concert and it was way more than a publicity stunt. The concert took place in 1945, four months after the Nazi surrender in World War II. According to Time Magazine, the audience was comprised of approximately 2,000 Berliners and 500 Allied soldiers.

Photo Courtesy of Carl Van Vechten photograph © Van Vechten Trust / Beinecke Library

The journalist’s name was Rudolph Dunbar and in reality, he was a musician first and war correspondent second. His guest conducting appearance in 1945 marked the first time a Black man would conduct the Berlin Philharmonic.

Dunbar, the grandson of Black slaves, was born in poverty in the early 1900s–various sources put the year anywhere between 1902 and 1907–in the town of Nabacalis on the northern coast of what was then British Guiana. He started playing clarinet (jazz and classical) with the British Guiana Militia Band at age 14 before moving to New York at 19 to attend the Juilliard School (then the Institute of Musical Art). Dunbar became active in the Harlem jazz scene, joining The Plantation Orchestra. You can hear him on clarinet in this recording.

In New York, Dunbar met composer William Grant Still. The two became close friends and collaborators. Dunbar became a champion of Still’s music. It was Still’s Symphony No. 1 in A-flat Major, Afro-American, that Dunbar conducted in that 1945 concert with the Berlin Philharmonic, which earned Dunbar a huge ovation, including at least five curtain calls.

After graduating Juilliard, Rudolph Dunbar moved to Europe, studying conducting with Felix Weingartner (student of Franz Liszt and successor to Gustav Mahler at the Vienna Philharmonic). In Paris, Dunbar was invited by Claude Debussy’s widow to give a recital in their home. In London, he founded a clarinet school and wrote a Treatise on the Clarinet that achieved worldwide renown. In 1942, Dunbar became the first Black man to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert was a fundraising effort for “Britain’s coloured allies” and the audience at the Royal Albert Hall that night numbered more than 7,000.

Photo Courtesy of Carl Van Vechten photograph © Van Vechten Trust / Beinecke Library

Dunbar joined a Black regiment during World War II, took part in the invasion of Normandy, and became the first foreigner (of any race) to conduct an orchestra following the liberation of Paris: the Festival of American Music, featuring the orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire with pianist Jeanne-Marie Darré.

An outspoken activist for racial equality, he said, “I will make my home in Paris where, if you are good, they will applaud you whether you are pink, white or black, and if you are bad they will whistle at you.”

His success as a conductor continued for a time. In addition to the Berlin and London Philharmonics, Dunbar was also the first Black man to conduct in Poland and Russia. He made his U.S. debut at the Hollywood Bowl (the same venue where William Grant Still had become the first Black man to conduct a major American orchestra a few years earlier).

But gradually, the concert appearances for Rudolph Dunbar began to dry up. He attributed this to racism, particularly at the BBC. At his Hollywood Bowl debut, the British press followed Dunbar with great enthusiasm. This prompted Dunbar to scoff, saying, “They want to show these films in the colonies and say, ‘look what we have done for Dunbar,’ but it is not the British who have done this for me, it is the Americans.”

Dunbar died in 1988. To this day, there is still mystery surrounding Dunbar’s blacklisting from concert appearances. Although for Dunbar, it wasn’t mystery, it was racism. You can read more here and also here. And you can watch a brief video interview (in French) with Dunbar here.

The post Open Ears: The Trailblazing Journey of Rudolph Dunbar appeared first on Classical KUSC.

About Open Ears: So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music were underappreciated in their time, or have been nearly lost to history. That’s why KUSC is starting Open Ears, a series of stories about composers, musicians, and conductors who deserve more recognition. You can learn more and explore other articles here.

Florence B. Price, the first African American woman to have a symphonic work performed by a major orchestra, is having a moment. I think there’s a good chance that moment will stretch into decades. Her music–largely unheard since her death in 1953–is constantly surprising: the sound world of Wagner and Dvorak infused with quirky changes of mood and pace, striking combinations of instruments and the unmistakable roots of her Southern heritage, the strains of gospel and Juba.

Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887. She attended the New England Conservatory, one of few prestigious music schools of the era to admit Black students. To escape the rampant racism of her native state, she moved to Chicago, where she intensified her musical studies and began to blossom as a composer of songs, piano pieces, and eventually four symphonies and other orchestral scores. In fact, it was conductor Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony that gave that historic performance of Price’s First Symphony in 1933. Though all this, she was also raising children and dealing with a messy divorce.

In his just-published New Yorker article about the composer, Alex Ross refers to “the shocking neglect of Price’s legacy.” He quotes her letter to a prominent conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, in which she refers to her “double handicaps”–her gender and her race. Koussevitzky ignored her request to consider performing one of her scores.

But the tide is turning. A superb recording of Price’s two violin concertos is just out, including the riveting Violin Concerto No. 2, played by soloist Er-Gene Kahng with the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ryan Cockerham. Kahng teaches at the University of Arkansas, where most of Price’s manuscripts are collected.

Here’s a live performance of Price’s Third Symphony by the Yale Symphony Orchestra, recorded in October 2016 at Woolsey Hall. Toshiyuki Shimada conducts.

As these performances and recordings of the music of Florence B. Price become more frequent, and as women composers in general gain traction in the concert hall, perhaps we’ll finally have the chance to assess Price’s legacy. That’s hard to do amid the sounds of silence.

The post Open Ears: The Resurrection of Florence B. Price appeared first on Classical KUSC.

About Open Ears: So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music were underappreciated in their time, or have been nearly lost to history. That’s why KUSC is starting Open Ears, a series of stories about composers, musicians, and conductors who deserve more recognition. You can learn more and explore other articles here.

Nearly 30 years after his death, music by composer Julius Eastman began popping up on programs around Los Angeles—his work, reflecting his conflicted experience as a gay Black American, finding new relevance among audiences.

“Talent is so precious, and he had such an original voice that I think he shouldn’t be buried, unknown. What Julius did that other composers may not have done,” says author Renée Levine-Packer, co-editor of Gay Guerilla: Julius Eastman and His Music, “was fuse jazz, even popular motifs or innuendos into classical. He liked choreographic aspects, he would bring people on and off the stage, and always included improvisation. That was different from the much more specific and mapped-out music by people like Steve Reich or Philip Glass.”

Eastman was born in 1940 in Manhattan and raised in Ithaca, New York—his mother had studied piano, and his father was the first Black graduate of the engineering school at NYU. Eastman showed a talent for music early on and a teacher suggested he audition for Juilliard. He didn’t get in there but was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

“There he became a true student of music, first studying piano and later changing to composition,” says Levine-Packer.

After graduation, Eastman went to Buffalo to sing in 1968. While he was there, he showed some of his compositions to Lukas Foss, conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic and founder of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at SUNY Buffalo.

Foss invited Eastman to perform his compositions at a series inspired by Los Angeles’ Monday Evening Concerts. Eastman was named a new music fellow at the Center, and Levine-Packer, who was working at the Center, got to know him there.

“He sang, he played piano, he conducted, he did mime, he did everything,” she says. “Being close to Buffalo was also very important in the early ‘70s because of the Attica Prison uprising—Buffalo is very close to Attica. Before that he was calling his pieces The Moon’s Silent Modulation or Piano Pieces 1-4, but after Attica he started naming his pieces Gay Guerilla and Evil Nigger—these things were politically aggressive on purpose, he wanted to use very toxic words to be emphatic about what was going on and how he felt about it. He wanted us to confront these terribly difficult terms.”

Levine-Packer says the question of identity was a difficult one for Eastman.

“I think it was an on-going struggle in his life. He was Black and gay at a time when it was difficult to be either, let alone both. He found himself working in what was essentially a white precinct, there were hardly any Black people in classical music. His brother, Jerry Eastman, is a jazz musician who performed with Count Basie, and I think created a little irritation there about why Julius was so engaged in this classical world.”

Levine-Packer describes Buffalo as a bubble where it didn’t matter what color your skin was, or who you slept with, but after six years there—and much success—Eastman decided he needed to move on.

“He had an assistant professorship and he just walked away and went to New York, where he thought he had a good chance to make a mark. It proved more difficult than he suspected and there was a downward spiral. He started to act erratically, and people began to stay away.”

Eastman died at age 49 of cardiac arrest.

Unfortunately, much of his music was lost, but a trove of recordings was found in Buffalo and became the foundation for a 3CD set called Unjust Malaise that came out in 2005.

The post Gay Guerilla: Julius Eastman Comes to Los Angeles appeared first on Classical KUSC.

A ghostly image of a tuxedo-clad Calvin Simmons resides under the freeway at the intersection of Grand Avenue and the 580 Freeway in Oakland. His portrait in a rapidly fading mural is one of only a few reminders in Oakland of this incredibly gifted and exceptional man. Simmons was born in San Francisco in 1950 to a musical mother who enrolled him in the SF Boys Chorus. He became the first African American to lead a major American orchestra when he was named music director of the Oakland Symphony in 1979. He was 28 years old. His tenure ended tragically when he died in a boating accident in 1982. In his short life, he frequently guest-conducted orchestras across the country and around the world, including the LA Philharmonic. He made his podium debut at the Metropolitan Opera in performances of Hansel and Gretel in 1978. At the time of his death, he was scheduled to conduct Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte with New York City Opera. With Oakland’s Calvin Simmons Theatre shuttered now for years, his legacy is in danger of going the way of that fading mural.

President and General Manager of the Oakland Symphony, Harold Lawrence, with Calvin Simmons | Photo by Mary Morris Lawrence

Explore the incredible story of Calvin Simmons here and see him in action coaching opera singers in some ancient videos.

The post Open Ears: The Groundbreaking, All-Too-Brief Life of Calvin Simmons appeared first on Classical KUSC.

Marian Anderson (b. 1897) was just six years old when she became a choir member at the Union Baptist Church (in her hometown of Philadelphia), where they nicknamed her “Baby Contralto.” Her father was a coal and ice dealer and was supportive of her musical interests. When she was eight, he bought her a piano. Since the family couldn’t afford lessons, she taught herself.

The church choir was so impressed by Anderson’s talent and motivation that the members of the congregation got together and raised money for her to study with a respected voice teacher. While she was studying, she entered a contest organized by the New York Philharmonic Society and won the chance to sing at Lewisohn Stadium in New York.

In 1928 Anderson performed at Carnegie Hall for the first time, and eventually received a scholarship that took her to Europe. By the late 1930s she was well known on both sides of the Atlantic. When she was invited by President Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor to perform at the White House, she became the first African American to receive this honor.

In 1939 her manager tried to arrange a performance for her at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The owners of the hall, the Daughters of the American Revolution, told Anderson and her manager that no dates were available. But the real reason for turning Anderson away was a policy established by the D.A.R. that restricted use of the hall to white performers.

When word got out, there was a public uproar, led in part by Eleanor Roosevelt, who resigned from the D.A.R. in protest.

Eleanor Roosevelt invited Anderson to perform instead at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. In front of a crowd of more than 75,000, Anderson gave a moving performance that was broadcast live to millions of radio listeners.

In 1955 Marian Anderson became the first African American to perform as a member of the Metropolitan Opera.

The post Open Ears: Get to Know the Incredible Story of Marian Anderson appeared first on Classical KUSC.

So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music were underappreciated in their time, or have been nearly lost to history. That’s why KUSC started Open Ears, a series of stories about composers, musicians, and conductors who deserve more recognition, starting with a look at the life of singer Marian Anderson, conductor Calvin Simmons, composer Florence B. Price, composer Julius Eastman, influential pianist, singer, and teacher Amanda Ira Aldridge, pioneering conductor Rudolph Dunbar, multi-talented composer/actor Jester Hairston, guitar prodigy María Luisa Anido, singer, choral director, composer, actor, teacher, and poet Eva Jessye, composer and pianist Margaret Bonds, composer and teacher Undine Smith Moore, pianist Mana-Zucca, composer, arranger, and singer Harry T. Burleigh, and composer and critic Nora Holt. Check back soon for new additions to KUSC’s Open Ears.

The post Open Ears: A Series of Stories About Composers, Musicians, and Conductors Who Deserve More Recognition appeared first on Classical KUSC.