During Black History Month & Beyond
Celebrating Composers of Color
We’re committed to providing a voice for all
From classic to contemporary, traditional to out-of-the-box, these spotlights are part of a larger dialogue on diversity, equity & inclusion that is happening right now — both at WCM & throughout the music world. Currently, WCM faculty members are working to bring the music and stories of these African American composers — and a wide range of composers of color — into our classrooms and studios to deepen the learning experience for all students.
Read about and listen to some remarkable composers of color this month.
JAMES FRANCIES H.T. BURLEIGH D-Composed
Pianist & Producer | Blue Note Recording Arts
James Francies
In October 2021, WCM was fortunate enough to have a special Master Class event with Blue Note Recording Artist, James Francies, as part of WCM’s ongoing Thomas A. Laskin Jazz Master Class series.
Called “a pianist with liquid dynamism in his touch” by the New York Times, Francies started on piano around age 4, with classical training and an education in the music of the church. Blessed with perfect pitch and synesthesia (or the ability to hear in colors), he attended his first jazz concert, by Houston-born piano legend Joe Sample, at age 6, and began studying jazz in junior high. A highly decorated tenure at HSPVA—including spots in the Monterey Jazz Festival’s Next Generation Jazz Orchestra, the Thelonious Monk Institute All-Star Jazz Sextet and the GRAMMY Jazz Session Combo—earned Francies a full scholarship to Manhattan’s New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.
December 2, 1866 – September 12, 1949
H.T. Burleigh
Harry Thacker (H.T.) Burleigh, born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1866, is the first African-American composer to draw acclaim for his concert songs and adaptations of African-American spirituals, playing a key role in the development of the American art song. Burleigh also served as a charter member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).
Performing in his local church at a young age, Burleigh grew up in a musical family, crediting his mother and maternal grandfather – who was once enslaved before purchasing his own freedom – for introducing him to the art of the African American spiritual. As a young man, at a time when racial segregation prevailed, Burleigh sang in the choirs and held paid positions at the Cathedral of St. Paul’s, the Park Presbyterian Church and the Reform Jewish Temple.
Receiving a scholarship to attend the National Conservatory of Music in New York when he was 26 years old, Burleigh studied under Christian Fritsch, Rubin Goldmark, John White, and Max Spicker. It was at the Conservatory that Burleigh met renowned composer, Antonín Dvořák, who served as the school’s director. Sharing the spirituals and plantation songs he learned from his mother and grandfather, Burleigh was encouraged by Dvořák – who himself created many pieces that were inspired by the songs introduced to him by Burleigh – to preserve the music in compositions of his own.
Burleigh’s first three songs were published by G. Schirmer in 1899, followed by the publication of some of his most well-known compositions, Ethiopia Saluting the Colors in 1915 and Jubilee Songs of the USA in 1916.
In 1917, Burleigh published various arrangements of the spiritual, Deep River, which would inspire the publication of more than 10 more negro spiritual songs that year.
Chicago-based String Quartet
D-Composed
Honoring Black creativity and culture with the music of Black composers, past, present and future, as the guide for all they do, the Chicago-based chamber music experience, D-Composed, creates intimate and out-of-the box experiences celebrating Black music throughout history.
As architects of creativity, D-Composed uses their platform to amplify Black voices and stories across a wide-range of genres and disciplines, through thoughtful programming, events and content.
With their The Sounds of Black Composers playlists – intentional collections that appeal to a broad range of interests – the group knocks down the walls surrounding traditional notions of what the classical music genre is, and instead display and reflect what it could be.
The D-Composed performance experience, crafted to connect with audiences on a deeper level by creating a comforting and accessible environment, is performed not in orchestra and concert halls, but intimate settings such as art galleries and cafes.
Explore the D-Composed Experience
Introducing D-Composed
APRIL 9, 1887 – JUNE 3, 1953
Florence Price
Florence Beatrice Price was an African-American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.
Price graduated as high school valedictorian at age 14 and left Little Rock in 1904 to attend the New England Conservatory and, after following her mother’s advice to present herself as being of Mexican descent, earned a bachelor of music degree in 1906, the only one of 2,000 students to pursue a double major (organ and piano performance).
Segregation was the order of the day and racial tensions began to mount in the city. Price was unable to find employment and, after being refused admission to the all-white Arkansas Music Teachers Association, she founded the Little Rock Club of Musicians and taught music at the segregated black schools. Little Rock had been a comfortable city for Black residents, but as racial problems began to develop resulting in a lynching, she moved with her husband, Attorney Thomas J. Price (whom she married in 1912) and their two daughters, to Chicago in 1927.
Florence Price’s career flourished after the move to Chicago. It was around 1928 when the G. Schirmer and McKinley publishing companies began to issue her songs, piano music, and especially her instructional pieces for piano. She filed for divorce from Thomas Price in 1928 and she and the children moved in with her student and friend Margaret Bonds. She gave music lessons at home and at T. Theodore Taylor’s School of Music located in the Abraham Lincoln Centre Community Service Agency, 700 E. Oakwood Blvd. in Chicago’s historic Bronzeville Community (now occupied by Northeastern Illinois University’s Center for Inner City Studies) and composed more than 300 works including symphonies, organ works, piano concertos, works for violin, arrangements of spirituals, art songs, and chamber works.
Price became the first black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra when Music Director Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played the world premiere of her Symphony No. 1 in E minor on June 15, 1933, on one of four concerts presented at The Auditorium Theatre from June 14 through June 17 during Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition. The historic June 15th concert entitled “The Negro in Music” also included works by Harry T. Burleigh, Roland Hayes, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and John Alden Carpenter performed by Margaret A. Bonds, pianist and tenor Roland Hayes with the orchestra.