THE LATE CONCERT composer Florence Price.
The Music Institute of Chicago’s “One Composer, One Community,”which focuses on the life and music of a single, under-represented composer during the course of an academic year, is featuring the late composer Florence Price. The initiative culminates with community activities and a concert on Friday, May 2.
Florence Price was the first African-American woman to have her music played by a symphony orchestra. Her music combines the European classical tradition with African-American spiritual and folk tunes.
According to Wikipedia, Price was born in 1887 and after spending the first part of her career in Little Rock, Arkansas, she left her hometown in the late 1920s for Chicago, fleeing rising racial violence in her native city and domestic abuse at the hands of her first husband.
She went on to enjoy her greatest successes in the succeeding decades, filling out a lifetime catalog of 300 compositions that includes four symphonies, four concertos and abundant chamber music and organ works.
In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home.
Poet, international spoken word artist, and motivational speaker K-Love presents a Music Institute-commissioned world premiere piece paying tribute to Price at Haven Middle School in Evanston, where she will engage with students in a variety of workshops on the afternoon on May 2.
Shortly after her 2003 debut on the Chicago poetry scene, K-Love quickly gained notoriety in the genre of spoken word. She is regarded as a legendary mentor to many of Chicago’s emerging artists and is affectionately referred to as the “Mother of the South Side” for her service and dedication to the youth through poetry.
At 7:30 p.m. on May 2, at Nichols Concert Hall at the Music Institute of Chicago, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston, a free public concert features K-Love performing her tribute, along with Music Institute faculty and students performing Price’s music and more.
Delivering remarks at the event will be Dr. Traci Lombré, a cultural historian and ethnomusicologist specializing in Kansas City and Chicago Black musical culture, performance, and pedagogy.
She is a member of Michigan’s Singing Justice Collective, which embraces divergent experiences of race, ethnicity, class background, academic rank, gender and religion to investigate themes in Black American music.
In February, the Music Institute hosted a professional development panel for Music Institute faculty and invited members of the Chicago Consortium of Community Music Schools.
The panel featured world-class scholars and interpreters of Price’s work, including Dr. Samantha Ege, award-winning researcher and musicologist and internationally recognized concert pianist; Dr. Louise Toppin, critically acclaimed operatic, orchestral, and oratorio performer and scholar on the music of African American composers; and Rachel Barton Pine, American violinist and Music Institute alum, whose recording, “Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries: 25th Anniversary Edition,” features Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (2022).
The Music Institute of Chicago leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music through unparalleled teaching, exceptional performances, and valuable service initiatives that educate, inspire, and build strong, healthy communities.
Since its founding in 1931, the Music Institute’s commitment to innovation, access, and excellence has served as an important community resource and helps to ensure music is available to everyone.
Each year, the Music Institute provides personalized music instruction to more than 1,500 students, regardless of age, level of experience, or financial means, across Community Music School locations in Chicago, Downers Grove, Evanston, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Wheaton and Winnetka, as well as online.
In addition, the Music Institute brings music education, masterclasses and sectionals for local K–12 ensembles, professional development, and music performance and engagement opportunities to thousands in the Chicago area; offers scholarship opportunities to students in its Community School and its Academy, a nationally recognized training center for highly gifted pre-college pianists and string players; and welcomes more than 15,000 visitors annually for performances, master classes, and special events at Nichols Concert Hall.
For information about the free and open to the public tribute to Florence Price, visit tinyurl.com/4ezr6xum.