Chicago Celebrates Composer Florence Price

Chicago was fortunate to have not one but TWO major events honoring composer Florence Price in May. The Music Institute of Chicago (MIC) paid tribute to the composer’s legacy with a celebration concert in her honor, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago performed her Third Symphony, prefaced by a CMPI panel. A local favorite with Chicago ties, Florence Price has also been featured as one of CMPI’s composers you should know.

One Composer, One Community: Florence Price Celebrated at MIC

Every year, the Music Institute of Chicago chooses an underrepresented composer as a focus for their One Composer, One Community program. During the entire school year, MIC students learn about the featured composer by learning his or her works, performing them in chamber or large ensembles, and hearing their history. The annual program concludes with a celebration concert featuring works of the composer. This year’s composer is Florence Price, an esteemed but in large part just recently rediscovered Black composer from the early Twentieth Century.

This year, students from beginning pianists to advanced Academy students and faculty members learned a selection of Florence Price’s works. In February, MIC held a professional development panel on Price that included musicologist and pianist Dr. Samantha Ege, scholar on African American composers Dr. Louise Toppin, and violinist and champion of Black music Rachel Barton Pine. Academy students performed one of Price’s works at their chamber orchestra concert in March, and Evanston school children learned about her life and work in outreach visits this past month.

The One Composer, One Community program culminated in a celebration concert of Price’s works, featuring MIC students and faculty, as well as cultural historian Dr. Traci Lombré and Chicago poet K-Love the Poet, who performed a newly commissioned poem about Florence Price’s life, linked below.

K-Love’s performance:

The concert began with some of MIC’s youngest pianists playing Price’s more pedagogical piano works, and also included CMPI faculty Sang Mee Lee in a violin work. A quartet of MIC Academy students, which included CMPI Viola Fellow Neena Agrawal and Cello Fellow Jan Vargas Nedvetsky, performed a lush movement of one of Price’s string quartets. A video is below.

Civic Orchestra of Chicago Performs Florence Price Symphony

Just a few days later, the Civic Orchestra performed Price’s Third Symphony under the baton of Thomas Wilkens. This robust symphony, written in 1940, was paired with a symphony of Antonín Dvořák, with both works showcasing the folk themes of their respective backgrounds.

Prior to the concert, CMPI mentor Roslyn Green hosted a panel of CMPI staff, parents, and alumni to discuss the CMPI program. As Roslyn explains, “We presented a panel discussion about CMPI to draw a connection between Chicago’s musical past, represented by Price in the concert program, with Chicago’s musical future, brought to us by the vision of CMPI and its fellows.” The panel included Project Director James Hall, CMPI alumni parent Denise Zachary, alumna Abby Lopez, and current fellow Sarah Morris. “The discussion was inspired by the impulse to feature artists on the upswing rather than waiting, like we did for Price, for their work to be discovered later.”

Roslyn describes the connection between Price and Chicago even further. “Chicago has a special connection with Florence Price, not just because she lived and worked here, but also because the Chicago Symphony performed her work. It was a groundbreaking step, and the first time a large-scale piece by an African American woman composer was performed by a major orchestra. That the city and its orchestra (not to mention orchestras across the world) have embraced her music since many of her scores were rediscovered in 2009 speaks to her artistry and sensibility. It feels like audiences were waiting to hear her music again, whether they knew it or not.”

More Florence Price concerts to come!

The celebration of Florence Price is not over. In early June, violinist Randall Goosby will perform Price’s second violin concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This concert, which presents a concerto thought to be lost and found only by accident in 2009, will surely be a delight.