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SPOTLIGHT ON 

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AFROMODERNISM IN HEDENDAAGSE MUZIEK

ENSEMBLE MODERN, APRIL 7TH, 2022

In connection to the concert of Ensemble Modern, which presents music by contemporary composers of African descent, living and working within the Western classical musical tradition, Echoes of Nothing proudly presents a small trip down the memory lane, providing a little bit of historical context through works of four great black classical composers from the 19th and 20th centuries, and one more from today, which works we love and wanted to add to the Ensemble Modern's already impressive line up, too. 

The conversation regarding inclusion and visibility of composers of colour within the Western classical music tradition and education, which has in the past been unarguably white male dominated and in majority Euro-centric, is an important one - as students, we ourselves recognise the big gaps in our taught culture and our perception of it, knowledge and repertoire - so we wanted to learn and change this, and invite you to join our journey of discovery, too.

Program notes written by Lisa Schreiber

1. William Grant Still (1895-1978): Danzas de Panama
“Tamborito” 

‘For me there is no White or Black music – there is only music by individual men that is
important if it attempts to dignify all men, not just a particular race.’

Born in 1895, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra gave the premiere of his Symphony No.1 ‘Afro-American’ in 1931, making William Grant Still the first African-American composer to have his piece performed by a major orchestra. And this didn’t stay the only first: In 1936, he also became the first African-American to conduct a major orchestra (Los Angeles PO). The Afro-English composer Coleridge Taylor was an early role model to Still, but his most important teacher was Edgar Varèse. Still worked in New York at beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, and enjoyed a prolific career earning numerous awards, honours, performances and commissions from major American orchestras and was lauded as the “Dean of African-American Classical Composers”. Composed in 1948 for string quartet or orchestra, Still based his Danzas de Panama on Panamanian folk themes collected by Elisabeth Waldo.

 

The dance Tamborito (‘the little drum’) is of African origin, probably brought along by the first slaves imported to Panama, where they were further processed by Spanish and Panamanian influences. In an attempt to approximate the sounds of native instruments, Still employs percussive use of the body of the string instruments, and merges African beat with Latin melodies.

2. Dorothy Rudd Moore (1940-2022): From the Dark Tower
III. Willow Bend and Weep, VII. For a Poet


‘When I was growing up, I felt that all composers were white, male and dead.’


Born in 1940, the American composer Dorothy Rudd Moore discovered her love for music early on. Still a child she would come up with her own songs, a talent happily supported and encouraged by her mother who herself was a singer. In high school Moore learned the clarinet so she could join the previously all-male band.
She studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1963, who was influential for so many of the 20th century composers such as Aaron Copeland, Astor Piazzolla and Philip Glass. In 1968, Moore furthermore co-founded the Society of Black Composers. Considered one of her generations leading composers of colour and having her music performed and recorded worldwide, she passed away only recently leaving behind a legacy of chamber music, song- cycles, orchestral works and an opera still to be discovered by wider audiences.


The song cycle From the Dark Tower was composed in 1970 for mezzo-soprano, cello and piano based on eight selected poems by African-American poets.

III. Willow Bend and Weep is set on a text by Herbert Clark Johnson. The willow tree commonly being associated with fertility and new life, known for its ability to grow, survive and thrive even in challenging conditions. In the poem, the poet asks the tree to weep on his behalf aware of his wounds, as the poet himself has no tears left to cry.

VII. For a Poet is inspired by a text by Countee Cullen who was a leading poet during the Harlem Renaissance, a boost of African American arts during the 1920s and 30s. Moore uses the three instruments as dramatic personages throughout the piece, and in this movement the cello seems to recite the words of the poem. The piano provides a delicate, bell-like accompaniment before the voice comes in and recites the words the cello has forecasted:

‘I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.’

3. Valerie Coleman (*1970): Rubispheres 

III. With Finesse 

 


‘I used to be in the youth orchestra [as a child], and there were so many African Americans. But somewhere along the line, when I got to college, I was the only one in the orchestra.

So I wondered what in the world happened here? It came to my mind that role models are needed.’

Valerie Coleman is an American Grammy-nominated composer and flutist who was named “2020 Classical Woman of the Year” by Performance Today,

is internationally acclaimed to be “one of the Top 35 Women Composers” as listed in the Washington Post, and in 2019 became the first African-American woman composer commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra.Furthermore, she is the creator of the innovative and multiple prize-winning Imani Winds Quintet, the word meaning ‘faith’ in Swahili. Still during her student years, Coleman had the vision to form an ensemble to highlight the work of underrepresented performers and composers from the non-European side of contemporary music. And thus the group’s initial members – now well-known and celebrated for their adventurous and diverse programming- were all of African-American and Latino origin. In her own compositions she frequently incorporates diverse styles such as jazz, Afro-Cuban and classical music and regularly addresses political and social themes. Rubispheres is a series of chamber music pieces of which the first three are set for wind trio (flute, clarinet and bassoon). Depicting urban life and different landscapes in the world, the third movement with its exciting and rhythmic virtuosity is inspired and dedicated to the hip club and lounge scene of Lower East Side of Manhattan where it was first performed in 2012.

4. Florence Price (1887-1953): Adoration

(arr. For harp and cello)


‘To begin with I have two handicaps – those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some
Negro blood in my veins’,

Florence Price introduced herself in a letter in 1943 to Serge Koussevitzky, the prominent conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.


Born in 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas, to a well-respected middle-class household, her father was a dentist and the mother a pianist being her first music teacher. 

By the age of 14, Price graduated from high school with distinction and continued to study at the New England Conservatory, one of the few conservatories that admitted African-Americans at the time. Marrying in 1912 she moved back to her hometown, but due to increasing threat of race violence moved her family to Chicago in 1927. She divorced her abusive husband, and while single-parenting her two daughters, the following years proved to be of great inspiration and creative outburst of major and large-scale works for her, living in an encouraging community during the vibrant Chicago Black Renaissance.
In 1932 she won the 1 st Price of the Wanamaker composition competition, which earned her the premiere of her first symphony by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. Today she is widely remembered as the first African-American woman composer in history to have her work performed by a leading orchestra.
However, as such she is still now more frequently referred to than her music is actually being heard and performed in concert halls. Even though the quality of her compositions was recognized during her lifetime, it was hard for her to find opportunities for her larger works to be performed. After her death she and her work fell somewhat into obscurity and failed to make part of the canon. Her works are mostly conservative, Romantic and tonal in style but often incorporate or are inspired by African-American spirituals. Adoration is originally scored for organ and was published in 1951, two years before her death.

5. Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1875-1912): 24 Negro Melodies
Deep River

 

‘What Brahms has done for Hungarian folk music, Dvorak for the Bohemian and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies’, Samuel Coleridge Taylor wrote in
the preface to his 24 Negro Melodies published in 1904.

 

This cycle consists of arrangements of both African and African-American melodies, through which he sought to preserve and
incorporate his paternal racial heritage into Western classical music.

Deep River is one of the most beloved African-American spirituals of anonymous source, and in his own words the most beautiful and touching melody of the whole series. It is a song about crossing boundaries, escaping from bondage and gaining freedom, both physically and metaphorically.

The original text of the spiritual is:

Deep river, my home is over Jordan.
Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground.
Oh, don't you want to go to that Gospel-feast?
That Promised Land, where all is peace?

Samuel Coleridge Taylor, not to be confused with his near-namesake and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was born in 1875 in London to an English woman and a descendant of freed African-Americans who had studied medicine. They were not married and the father returned back to Africa unaware of the pregnancy. Coleridge Taylor grew up with his mother and her family, who quickly remarked his outstanding talent in music and encouraged and supported him to take up his studies at the Royal College of Music, which he started at the age of 15. He was soon earning a reputation as a composer, personally encouraged by Edward Elgar, critics describing him as “musical genius” and being referred to as “Black Mahler” his music soon gained success over in the USA.


He was particularly celebrated among African Americans for his endeavours, and was invited to meet President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. In 1904, he was appointed the conductor of the Handel Society of London, a position he held until his death just like the post of Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music.

FURTHER READING

William Grant Still
Dorothy Rudd Moore
Valerie Coleman
Florence Price
Samuel Coleridge Taylor

PEOPLE OF THE SPOTLIGHT PROJECT

PROJECT MUSICIANS

Program notes: Lisa Schreiber

Web editor: Natalie Kulina

Musicians:

Shane van Neerden

Lucie van Ree

Henrique Constância

Dafne Paris

Khrystyna Kulchynska

Irene Piazza

Natalie Kulina

Jozefien Dumortier

Bernardo Calvet Nabais

Marta Vilaça

Juan André Carmona

Andreea Ilie

Videography: Gabrielle Cepella, Jesse Schoenmakers

Lights: Madelief Daems

Sound: Daan van West

The project was made possible thanks to Muziekgebouw aan't IJ and Conservatorium van Amsterdam.

Special acknowledgement to Arnold Marinissen and Nora Kim Braams.

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CURATORS OF ECHOES OF NOTHING

CURATORS

Echoes of Nothing is a concert and side programming series in the Muziekgebouw aan't IJ in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It is an unique platform, on which four young curators offer their personal reactions to the main hall programming - performances that play with perspective and perception, offer the opportunities to discover new music and provide unexpected experiences to the concert goers!

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NATALIE KULINA

Czech violinist Natálie Kulina is mainly a chamber musician, a member of the electronic music group Ensemble Resilience and a co-founder of the violin duo Grimm Duette, among others. Besides working on contemporary and experimental music, she is actively exploring historically informed performance and collaborations between different art forms. In all her projects as a musician and organiser and as a researcher, she aims at creating new and
interactive ways to connect with audiences, with special focus on younger generations.

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DAFNE PARIS

Dafne Paris is a Dutch-Italian harpist based in Amsterdam. An active solo and chamber classical musician, Dafne also regularly works on interdisciplinary projects. Dafne is very passionate about exploring the different possibilities and sonorities available to the harp and using her instrument in a versatile and innovative way. She enjoys combining the traditional harp repertoire with music theatre performances, live electronics and visual art. She is currently working on an experimental music theatre performance that will make its debut on the stages of the 66th International Festival of Contemporary Music of La Biennale di Venezia and will be tutored by composers like Simon Steen-Andersen and Lucia Ronchetti.

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HIDEHIRO NAKAMURA

BERNARDO NABAIS

Hidehiro Nakamura comes from Japan, has played the recorder since childhood and first studied Electrical Engineering at Tokyo Science University. After graduation with a Master's degree in Engineering, he started to work as a network engineer in the Japanese Telecommunication Company. After a few years of working, he decided to devote his life to music and quit his job to start studying the recorder at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam
in 2016, getting his bachelor's degree with honour. He is now studying at the same conservatorium as a master student.

Bernardo Calvet Nabais, a Portuguese cellist, studied in Lisbon and Porto before coming to Amsterdam to pursue master studies with Pieter Wispelwey. Bernardo, as a soloist, is a prize winner at multiple national competitions, and is an avid chamber and orchestral
musician, having played in orchestras such has the Aurora Symphony Orchestra (Stockholm), the Orquestra Sinfonica do Porto, Orquestra de Câmara Portuguesa and the Orquestra XXI or collaborating in a project with the ASKO Schoenberg Ensemble. He is interested in exploration and presentation of wide variety of classical music.

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