Credit: Colour of Music
Ever hear compositions of Florence Price, William Grant Still, Mary Watkins or John Wineglass? They are among featured composers of Colour of Music, Black Classical Musicians Festival November 10-13 at Sacramento’s Guild Theater, Memorial Auditorium and Mondavi Center in Davis. Since 2013, Founder and Artistic Director Lee Pringle has been the guiding force of the Festival which presents mostly in Southern cities – but will now be making a west coast debut. For Pringle, who is also Founder and Director of acclaimed Charleston Gospel Choir, the festival provides an important and vital platform to highlight talented African-American classical musicians.
“For every successful Black person you see on the classical music stage, there are probably thirty-five others who never got the opportunity. The classical arts world is like a naval carrier; it’s a very slow moving vessel so you need bold, radical statements like Colour of Music to say, continue at the nautical miles you are going and we Blacks are going to make some circles around you to find our success,” says Pringle.
The Festival’s diverse programs include song recitals, an All-Female Chamber Orchestra and Grimbert-Barre Trio in an interesting mélange of repertoire that highlights: Beethoven’s Ah! Perfido, Op. 65, Mendelssohn’s Octet, Op. 20, Dvorak’s To The Moon from Russalka, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24, Florence Price’s Hold Fast to Dreams, Ahmed Alabaca’s Across the Calm Waters of Heaven, Karl Jenkin’s Palladio and Jonathan Grimbert-Barre’s Tribal Concerto for String Trio and Orchestra - as well as a presentation and signing by Christopher Brooks about the Shirley Verrett’s autobiographical book I Never Walk Alone, of which he collaborated. (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
Pringle discussed the significant role Black musicians have played as classical artists since the 18th century, despite struggles for recognition and lagging financial support. Contributions by vocalists have been particularly stunning and not surprisingly many Black singers of various genres drew from a background of singing gospel and spirituals in church. Pringle comments that Marian Anderson was a groundbreaking personality who was supported by progressive white patrons during her career ascendency. “She was living a life, at the time that most Blacks didn’t dream of living in a white world.”
He says it was Anderson’s beauty and talent that helped people start to feel comfortable about Black superstars other than Sidney Poitier and that she paved the way for other opera singers such as Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Paul Robeson, Simon Estes, Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle and Eric Owens. He points out that while the American classical music experience is based on a predominately white European influence, Black people had to build everything from scratch “which didn’t leave much room for virtuoso string players or pianists, which is why there was such a huge gravitation for people in the Black community to go into the pipe organ as a classical instrument as it was the most accessible instrument of the time.”
Pringle comments that Black people have been playing the fiddle as long as the banjo, which was created in Africa and a German violin maker even made instruments for enslaved African Americans to play – although not of Stradivarius quality. Despite roadblocks there has also been joy and great accomplishment as evidenced by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, widely regarded as the first composer of African descent. He was a multi-talented composer, violinist, conductor and fencer. “We love the European Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner but Chevalier Saint-Georges was eleven years older than Mozart and wrote six operas but very few people know about his work. In fact, John Adams {America’s second president} wrote about the Chevalier in his diaries and met him while in Paris – while we had slavery full-throttle.” He adds that George Walker was the first African-American to have won a Pulitzer Prize in Music and his sister Frances was a professor of piano at Oberlin Conservatory, the first US conservatory to admit Black students.
Violin virtuoso George Bridgetower was another musician of Black ancestry who performed with Beethoven in Vienna and to whom the initial dedication of the composer’s so-called Kreutzer Sonata was given – that is until the two apparently had an irreversible falling out. Pringle observes that Europe has always been more forward thinking in their attitude towards Blacks. “Grace Bumbry, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou for example, moved abroad to Paris and other places where the oppression wasn’t so smothering so that they could breathe artistically and even Black conductors had to go to Europe to get podium time.” He mentions that although Black conductors have been asked to guest lead major US orchestras, few have been hired as Music Director, which also includes positions for Black orchestra players.
The closing concert of Colour of Music features Tribal Concerto, an intriguing work by cellist Jonathan Grimbert-Barre who is one of the brothers of Grimbert-Barre Trio. According to Pringle the work was inspired by Alex Haley’s book Roots of which television viewers were riveted to in the namesake 1977 ABC miniseries that featured LeVar Burton of later Star Trek: The Next Generation fame. “In Roots, this was the first time Black Americans were able to see a drama about what their ancestors endured. It started to change the narrative for many Americans.” Pringle also reflects on the overt and brutal injustice that occurred with Rodney King and George Floyd, among others and suggests that a socio-economic disparity of income contributes worldwide to whether children have access to the arts – which affects African-American children wanting to go to high profile arts schools or conservatories.
“I want Black classical artists to have the same opportunity as white artists get. The purpose of Colour of Music Festival is for everyone to see the talent of Black classical musicians. We are going to concertize throughout the year whenever we can get the funding to do so.” In commenting about what he calls the “undercapitalization of Black art institutions” Pringle reflects that receiving financial support for Colour of Music is a challenge and that “the Black community doesn’t have multigenerational wealth or the philanthropic wherewithal” to consistently support arts organizations. Regional venues in this country are often underfunded and have to rely largely on private donors to keep orchestras or concert series afloat. The so-called trickle-down theory particularly affects underprivileged Black and multicultural communities as does a low percentage of people in this country who actually attend and support classical music venues. In this regard, if Congress passes President Biden’s budget request for the 2022 fiscal year, the National Endowment for the Art’s budget would increase to $201 million - of which 40% of all NEA supported activities take place in high-poverty neighborhoods. Music has been called the universal language so let’s get the dialogue going.