Tonight, I'm delighted to present a lecture recital in celebration of International Women's Day as part of the humanities cultural programme.
One of the founding stones for the future, Devenish Walsman Centre for the Humanities.
I will be performing here in the Oakshott Room inside the historic Lincoln College, built in 14 27 and located in the heart of the city of Oxford.
We will be looking at and listening to the musical lives and legacies of four African-American women from the era of the black Chicago Renaissance.
This was an era of cultural rebirth, social transformation and rich artistic expression that took place in the first half of the 20th century.
The Black Chicago Renaissance,
so thinkers and visionaries of African descent bring about a rebirth in all aspects of life and identity and whether it was through music,
art, dance, literature or theatre. The expressive arts were important vehicles for self actualisation and collective uplift.
The south side was the locus of activity. Located in the black belt, but redefined by those on the inside as the black metropolis.
Various forms of brilliant artistry flourished here.
As a musicologist, I'm interested in how black women composers used their craft to build communities on the South
Side as well as to assert their individual identities in the wider world of classical music.
As a pianist, I hope that by performing their music, we not only come to appreciate who these women were in their time,
but we additionally create the space for their voices to resonate with us today.
I'd like to begin with the composer, Florence Price.
Price came to mainstream attention in 1933 when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered her symphony number one in a minor.
This was the first time that a major national orchestra had performed the symphonic work of a black female composer.
My research explores this history through price of Chicago and the models of black female patronage and support behind her success.
This narrative leads us to the larger network of black women composers in interwar Chicago.
But we find Nora Holt better, Jackson King and Margaret Bonds, whose music you'll soon hear.
I've been performing Florence Price's piano music for the past few years and on my new album,
which is called Fantasy Magged The Piano Music of Florence Price. I focus on her engagements with this wonderfully expressive fantasy genre.
She blends African-American folk songs with the late 19th century romantic tradition.
And we're left with these four exquisite fancies that capture the diversity of her cultural heritage.
I reconstructed Florence Price's third fantasy, which was thought to be lost.
And so bringing this work to life, along with the other pieces on the album,
sheds new light on a hidden and previously unheard aspect of Price's story.
In the case of Nora Holt, I wish I could tell you about her 200 compositions.
She wrote orchestral music, songs. Chamber works and solo pieces.
She was a highly sought-after performer in the U.S., China and across Europe.
And when she would travel, she would keep her music in storage.
But on one occasion, she returned to find that her belongings had been ransacked and all of her music was gone.
Only two pieces survived. One was an art song called The Sandman, and the other was a short work for solo piano called Negro Dance.
These pieces remain with us today because Nora Holt published them herself.
One of the earliest Chicago performances of Negro dance was 100 years ago.
Nora Holt would perform this as part of the lecture recitals that she gave to the younger generation through Negro dogs.
She would highlight the importance of musical study and the beauty of black American folk traditions.
Unlike Nora Holt, who was born in Kansas. I'm Florence Pryce, who was born in Arkansas.
Betty Jackson King and Margaret Bonds were born and raised in Chicago.
Betty Jackson King came from a very musical family.
Her mother, Gertrude Smith Jackson, was deeply involved in musical life on the South Side and together with Betty's sister, Catherine.
They formed the Jacksonian trio touring Chicago and beyond.
The musicologist Helen Walker Hill remarks upon how their close harmonic singing style influenced Betty's own compositions.
And we hear this in the for seasonal sketches. Little has been documented about the performance history of this work.
But one striking detail is that she dedicates four seasonal sketches to her Chicago colleague and friend, Geneva Handey SuBo.
Dr. SuBo was a pianist and pioneer in black music scholarship.
This dedication, therefore, demonstrates the collegiality and reverence that defined the dynamics between the black Chicago Renaissance women.
Margaret Bonds was a child prodigy and daughter of the black Chicago Renaissance.
Her music teachers included her mother, Estelle Evans, who was a very influential community figure in Chicago.
Margaret also studied under Florence Price and many other provenance names in the black classical scene.
The bonus family home was open to the community as a rehearsal space, an intellectual salon and a place of refuge for those in need.
These are the kinds of environments that I focus on in my scholarship because they expand our thinking about black women in classical music.
Rather than focussing on black women's exceptionalism in the classical mainstream,
we find a more nuanced narrative when we situate their accomplishments in the uplifting communities at which they arose.
I'd like to close with Margaret Borden's spiritual sweets,
part of which I recorded on my first album called Full Women Music for Solo Piano by Florence Price,
Czechoslovakian lover Ethel Bills and and Margaret Bonds.
Although Bonds was no longer living in Chicago when she wrote this piece.
The influence of women like Nora Holt and Florence Pryce is undeniable.
Like her predecessors, she brings together black vernacular idioms and classical conventions.
She draws inspiration from the past and shapes this into a distinct voice that suggests hope for the future.
This brings us to the end of what has been a fantastic evening here at Lincoln College, but before you go, I have one more thing to share with you.
And that's the release of my album, Fantasy Magged, available now.
So I hope that you continue to enjoy this wonderful repertoire.
Thank you to Lincoln College Lord Chris Charity, the Zilka Trust and Torch for supporting this event.
Thank you. Also to our viewers at home for watching.
And for your comments on YouTube, we do hope that you've enjoyed tonight's International Women's Day celebration.