|
Helen Walker-Hill
Helen Walker-Hill (née Siemens; May 26, 1936 – August 8, 2013) was a Canadian pianist and musicologist who specialised in the music of black women composers. Walker-Hill was married to the composer George Walker (composer), George Walker from 1960 to 1975. The marriage produced two sons, the violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and the playwright Ian Walker (playwright), Ian Walker. From 1981 to 1991 she was married to Robert Hadley Hill, a Colorado teacher. Biography Helen Walker-Hill was born on May 26, 1936, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She received her early musical training from her mother, Margaret Siemens, and continued piano studies with Emma Endres Kountz in Toledo, Ohio. She received her BA degree from the University of Toledo (1957), and was a Fulbright fellow at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris in France where she studied with Nadia Boulanger (1958); on the ship she met George Walker. She earned an MA in musico ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winnipeg, Canada
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,607 and a metropolitan population of 834,678, making it Canada's List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, sixth-largest city and List of census metropolitan areas and agglomerations in Canada, eighth-largest metropolitan area. The city is named after the nearby Lake Winnipeg; the name comes from the Cree language, Western Cree words for 'muddy water' – . The region was a trading centre for Indigenous peoples in Canada, Indigenous peoples long before the European colonization of the Americas, arrival of Europeans; it is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe (Ojibway), Ininew (Cree), Oji-Cree, Dene, and Dakota people, Dakota, and is the birthplace of the Métis people in Canada, Métis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is a Private college, private art college in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1890, it has 6,493 students (as of fall 2021) pursuing degrees in more than 60 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Columbia College Chicago is the host institution of several affiliated educational, cultural, and research organizations, including the Center for Black Music Research, the Center for Book and Paper Arts, the Center for Community Arts Partnerships, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Columbia College Chicago is not affiliated with Columbia University, Columbia College Hollywood, or any other Columbia College in the United States. However, Columbia College Hollywood was originally founded as a branch campus of Columbia College Chicago from 1952-1957. History Columbia College Chicago was founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valerie Capers
Valerie Capers (born May 24, 1935) is an American pianist and composer who is best known for her contributions in jazz. Early life Capers was born in New York City to a musical family that introduced her to classical and jazz music. Her father was a professional jazz pianist who was friends with Fats Waller, and her brother Bobby later played tenor sax and flute with Mongo Santamaria's Afro-Cuban band. Capers has been blind since the age of six, when an illness deprived her of her sight. Her early schooling took place at the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind, where she studied classical piano with Elizabeth Thode. Thode taught Capers to read Braille music notation; Capers had to learn all of her pieces by memorizing them in Braille before playing them. With Thorpe's encouragement, Capers continued to study at the Juilliard School of Music, where she obtained her bachelor's and master's degrees. She was the first blind graduate of the Juilliard School. Career U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lena Johnson McLin
Lena Mae McLin (née Johnson; September 5, 1928 – October 3, 2023) was an American educator, composer, author, and pastor, who served as a music teacher in the Chicago Public Schools system at Kenwood Academy. Early life Lena Mae Johnson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 5, 1928. At the age of five she was sent to live with her uncle, Thomas A. Dorsey. She attended the Pilgrim Baptist Church as a child, where she was exposed to gospel music and served as an accompanist to her uncle's choir. McLin had a bachelor's degree in music, specializing in piano and violin, from Spelman College, and a graduate degree in music from the American Conservatory of Music. Career Teaching McLin taught in Chicago at Hubbard High School, Harlan High School, and Kenwood Academy. At Kenwood she taught Mandy Patinkin, Deitra Farr, and Kim English. Her other students included R. Kelly, Tammy McCann, Chaka Khan, Da Brat, Mark Rucker, Robert Sims, and Jennifer Hudson. She was called "the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Bonds
Margaret Allison Bonds (March 3, 1913 – April 26, 1972) was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher. One of the first Black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her popular arrangements of African-American spirituals and frequent collaborations with Langston Hughes. She was the first African American woman to perform with the all-White and all-male Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the first African American women to have her music broadcast on European radio, the first African American woman to have her music performed widely in Africa. only the second African American woman in classical music to be elected to full membership in ASCAP; the first woman Black or white to win not three awards from ASCAP. Life Family background Margaret Jeanette Allison Majors was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 3, 1913. Her father, Monroe Alpheus Majors, was an active force in the civil rights movement as a physi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tania León
Tania León (born May 14, 1943) is a Cuban-born American composer of both large-scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations. Early years and education She was born Tania Justina León in Havana, Cuba, of mixed French, Spanish, Chinese, African, and Cuban heritage. It was her grandmother who recognized that her granddaughter liked music because of the way she reacted to music on the radio. She began studying the piano at the age of four and she attended Carlos Alfredo Peyrellade Conservatory, where she earned a B.A. in 1963, and the Alejandro García Caturla Conservatory, where she studied piano with Zenaida Manfugás. Leon was one of an estimated 300,000 Cubans who left Cuba as a refugee on the so-called " Freedom Flights". In the spring of 1967 she left Cuba and settled in New York City, continuing her studies at New York University under the tutelage of Ursula Mamlok (B.S., 1971; M.S., 1975). Career In 1969, León ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippa Schuyler
Philippa Duke Schuyler (; August 2, 1931 – May 9, 1967) was an American concert pianist, composer, author, and journalist. A child prodigy, she was the daughter of black journalist George Schuyler and Josephine Schuyler, a white Texan heiress. Schuyler became famous in the 1930s for her talent, intellect, mixed race parentage, and the eccentric parenting methods employed by her mother. Hailed as "the Shirley Temple of American Negroes," Schuyler performed public piano recitals and radio broadcasts by the age of four. She performed two recitals at the New York World's Fair at the age of eight. Schuyler won numerous music competitions, including the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts at Carnegie Hall. At 11, she became the youngest member of the National Association for American Composers and Conductors. Schuyler encountered racism as she grew older, and had trouble coming to terms with her mixed-race heritage. She later became a journalist and was killed in a helic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betty Jackson King
Betty Jackson King (Feb 17, 1928 – June 1, 1994) was an American pianist, singer, teacher, choral conductor, and composer. She was best known for her vocal works. Biography King, who was of African American heritage, was born in 1928 in Chicago. She first started learning music from her mother, Gertrude Jackson Taylor. King's father, Reverend Frederick D. Jackson a pastor at the Community Church of Woodlawn, helped expose her to church hymns and spirituals. Along with her mother and sister Catherine, she sang in the Jacksonian Trio. In 1969 when King began teaching at Wildwood High School in New Jersey, she integrated the high school's public school teaching staff. She was married to Vincent King, had one daughter, Rochelle King, and has two granddaughters Vincena and Joysaleen. King died on June 1, 1994, in Wildwood, New Jersey. Education Betty Jackson King studied throughout her life. She began at Wilson Junior College studying under Esther Goetz Gilliland. She then wen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Undine Smith Moore
Undine Eliza Anna Smith Moore (25 August 1904 – 6 February 1989), the "Dean of Black Women Composers", was an American composer and professor of music in the twentieth century. Moore was originally trained as a classical pianist, but developed a compositional output of mostly vocal music—her preferred genre. Much of her work was inspired by black spirituals and folk music. Undine Smith Moore was a renowned teacher, and once stated that she experienced "teaching itself as an art". Towards the end of her life, she received many awards for her accomplishments as a music educator.Walker-Hill, Helen. ''From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and their Music''. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 60. Biography Early life Undine Eliza Anna Smith was born the youngest of three children to James William Smith and Hardie Turnbull Smith. She was the granddaughter of slaves. In 1908, her family moved to Petersburg, Virginia. Her hometown of Ja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julia Perry
Julia Amanda Perry (March 25, 1924 – April 24, 1979) was an American classical composer and teacher who combined European classical and neo-classical training with her African-American heritage. Life and education Born in Lexington, Kentucky, on March 25, 1924, Julia Perry moved with her family while still a child to Akron, Ohio. She studied voice, piano, and composition at Westminster Choir College from 1943 to 1948, earning her bachelor's and master's degrees in music. For her thesis she wrote a secular cantata titled ''Chicago''. She continued her graduate studies at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, where she was a student of Luigi Dallapiccola, and then studied at the Juilliard School of Music. She was awarded her first Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition in 1954. In 1952, Perry began studying under Nadia Boulanger in Paris and was awarded the Boulanger Grand Prix for her Viola Sonata. She was awarded her second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956, which she used ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams (born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs; May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie. She has been noted for her 1954 conversion to Catholicism, which led to a musical hiatus and a later transformation in the nature of her music. She continued to perform and work as a philanthropist, educator, and youth mentor until her death from bladder cancer in 1981. Early years The second of eleven children, Williams was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A child prodigy, at the age of two she was able to pick out simple tunes and by the age of three, she ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florence Price
Florence Beatrice Price (née Smith; April 9, 1887 – June 3, 1953) was an American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death in 1953. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra.Slonimsky, N. (ed.), ''The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'', 8th edn, New York: Schirmer, 1994, p. 791. Price composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home. Biography Early life and education Florence Beatrice Smith was born to Florence (Gulliver) and James H. Smith on April 9, 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
