Florence Price
Today we’re listening to Florence Price, an American composer from Arkansas. Born in Little Rock in 1887, she started playing piano under the tutelage of her mother, a music teacher, and gave her first recital when she was four.1 She attended the New England Conservatory of Music, studying organ and piano, and moved to Chicago in the 1920s. There she composed her first symphony, in E Minor, which was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933, making her the first female African-American composer performed by a major orchestra in the United States.2 We’re playing a 2021 performance of that first symphony as well as her third by the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 2009, a couple preparing to renovate a house in St. Anne, Illinois, discovered sheet music which turned out to be lost compositions by Price.3 Several of those compositions are performed by the Catalyst Quartet on their 2022 record, Uncovered, Vol. 2.
Florence Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 - Florence Price & Philadelphia Orchestra (71m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal
Uncovered, Vol. 2: Florence B. Price - Florence Price & Catalyst Quartet (117m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal
Have a great Thursday.
Love this. Thank you