All this month I will be blogging about the many important contributions that Black musicians have made to classical music throughout history. I’m going to begin with a 20th c. African-American woman composer that Alexis Corbin has been highlighting for the past several weeks…Florence Price

Florence Price was the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer and have her work played by a major orchestra. When in June, 1933 the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her Symphony in e minor, the Chicago Daily News declared it “a faultless work, a work that speaks its own message with restraint and yet with passion… worthy of a place in the regular symphonic repertoire.” Price was born in Little Rock, AK in 1887 and graduated with honors from the New England Conservatory of Music. She immediately assumed the position of head of a university music department in Atlanta. Once married, she moved back to Little Rock, but racial tensions forced the family north to Chicago. Finding herself a divorced mother of two in Chicago in 1931, she took up composing and jobs as a theater organist to support her family. That aforementioned premiere launched her as a national composer. Another African-American woman “pioneer” in classical music, alto Marion Anderson, would sing one of Price’s songs “My Soul’s Been Anchored in de Lord” in her famous Easter Sunday concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. But more about that at a later date…