Music by Women and BIPOC Composers

"The stimulus this handsomely produced volume will provide to research and teaching may well surpass that offered by Dr. Southern's earlier studies. This major accomplishment belongs in the libraries of all individuals and institutions interested in any aspect of American music." Ethnomusiciology

African-American women composers remain largely unknown despite their important musical contributions. Active in the United States since the late-19th century, several gained national and international recognition during their lifetimes, only to have their work neglected after their deaths. From Spirituals to Symphonies is a unique, extensively researched examination of the history and scope of musical composition by African-American women, focusing on the implications of race, gender, and class for their musical creativity, and demonstrating how this important, underappreciated category of American art was shaped by the unique individual personalities of its participants. Their particular times, communities, families, racial heritages, economic circumstances, education, and musical training were all brought to bear on their music, and author Helen Walker-Hill challenges the assumption that black women's only important musical contributions have been in folk, jazz, and pop. With unprecedented detail, she charts the lives and the output of a group of artists whose work has gone unnoticed for too many years.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In recent years, considerable scholarly attention has been paid to women in music, and information on the music of a handful of black women composers, such as Florence Price and Mary Lou Williams, has been published. Determined search, however, is needed to locate what little data is available on most such composers. Proceeding from a desire to use music of black women composers in her piano performance and teaching, Helen Walker-Hill has dedicated herself to uncovering this material, utilizing secondary sources and numerous archives, conducting interviews with composers, and engaging in voluminous correspondence with individuals and institutions. The result is the most comprehensive catalog of music composed by African American women to date. The depth of detail required limiting the scope to solo and ensemble piano music. However, an introductory overview on the contributions of black women in music and biographical sketches on the fifty-four composers profiled in the catalog contain broader information. Over 300 piano works are listed, with detailed descriptive information on close to 200 works the author was able to obtain and study, including sources and levels of difficulty. Appendixes list available published music, ensemble instrumentation, music for teaching, and music published before 1920. A selected bibliography and a selected discography are also provided. This biographical dictionary and descriptive catalog will be most directly useful to performers and teachers, but the breadth of information makes it valuable for research in music history, African American studies, and women's studies.

The preponderance of early Black composers wrote choral music and even the most outstanding among them did not compose works for woodwinds. However, the later half of the twentieth century has witnessed a rise in compositions for woodwinds, both for solo and chamber ensembles by relatively unknown Black composers. This pioneering volume will become the standard source of information on nineteenth and twentieth century Black composers from three continents as well as their woodwind compositions. It contains the most current and complete biographical data on 90 African composers, Afro-American composers, Afro-Latin composers, and Afro-European composers, including their education and professional experience and information on their continuing musical influence. A distinctive feature is the separate, easy-to-use woodwind music index of both published and unpublished works for solo and chamber ensembles that groups the music by medium and numbers into 27 categories that contain some 430 works. Exact instrumentation, dedication or commission, premiere performance, and publisher are also found here. A list of abbreviations, key to publishers, collections, and manuscripts, and a discography of 38 recordings of woodwind works by 26 of the included composers complete the volume. This first bibliography of woodwind music by Black composers is an excellent reference work for Black composers, for the woodwind repertoire, and for American music in general. It will be highly useful in college-level courses such as Survey of Afro-American Music and Woodwind Literature as well as to woodwind players, ensemble directors, and scholars.

Following the pattern established with his pioneering work, Woodwind Music of Black Composers, Aaron Horne now presents a comparable work for the string music of Black composers. Composers from Africa as well as the Diaspora are covered in this, the most comprehensive work on the topic yet published. Organized in alphabetical order by composer, each entry provides information, where available, on the composer's life and career, and then details all works that include strings as well as information about commission, premiere, and composer bibliography and discography. The volume includes a string index, as well as a general discography and bibliography. This work should prove invaluable for scholars examining the impact of Black composers on classical music, opera, and ballet, and it will be equally valuable to those devising repertoire for teaching and concert purposes.

Following the pattern established with his pioneering works String Music of Black Composers and Woodwind Music of Black Composers, Aaron Horne now presents a comparable work for the piano and related instruments (such as accordion, harpsichord, and organ). Composers from Africa as well as the Diaspora are covered in this volume, the most comprehensive work on the topic yet published. Organized in alphabetical order by composer, each of the more than 200 entries provides information, where available, on the composer's life and career, and then details all works that include piano as well as information about commission, premiere, and composer bibliography and discography. The volume includes a keyboard music index as well as a general discography and a bibliography. This work should prove invaluable for scholars examining the impact of Black composers on music and dance, and it will be equally valuable to those devising repertoire for teaching and concert purposes.

Spirituals were an intrinsic part of the African-American plantation life and were sung at all important occasions and events. This volume is the first index of African-American spirituals to be published in more than half a century and will be an important research tool for scholars and students of African-American history and music. The first collection of slave songs appeared in 1843, without musical notation, in a series of three articles by a Methodist Church missionary identified simply as c. Collections that included musical notation began appearing in the 1850s. The earliest book-length collection of spirituals containing both lyrics and music was published in 1867 and entitled Slave Songs of the United States. Not since the 1930s, with the publication of the Index to Negro Spirituals by the Cleveland Public Library, has an index of spirituals been compiled. The spirituals are neatly organized in four indexes: a title index, first line index, alternate title index and a topical index that includes twenty major categories. A bibliography of indexed sources serves as a guide for further research.

Although the choral arrangements of the African-American spirituals constitute the largest group of folk song arrangements in western literature, they have received little scholarly attention. This book provides the needed historical and stylistic information about the spirituals and the arrangements. It traces the history and cultural roots of the genre through its inception and delineates the African and European characteristics common to the original folk songs and arrangements. Ensembles that have perpetuated the growth of the spiritual arrangements--from Fisk Jubilee Singers of the 1870s through those currently active--are chronicled as well. Musicians, choral directors, and scholars will welcome this first complete text on the African-American spiritual genre. Annotated listings of titles provide information choral directors need to make ensemble-appropriate performance choices. Arrangements indexed by title, arranger, and subject complement the accompanying biographies and repertoire information. Well-organized and thoroughly researched, this text is a valuable addition to music, choral, multicultural, and African-American libraries.

Aaron Horne provides the most comprehensive guide to brass music written by black composers. He covers composers from around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Included in the book is biographical information; commission, duration, instrumentation, date of publication, premiere, publisher, discography for each piece; bibliographical sources; and an index which groups the music by numbers, medium, and ensemble. This is the fourth volume in Aaron Horne's monumental effort to provide the most comprehensive guide to music composed by black composers. In this volume he covers composers from around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, including William Grant Still, Ulysses Kay, Anthony Davis, John Coltrane, and other major figures from the world of classical, jazz, and popular music. The main body of the book is divided into sections devoted to African, African American, Afro-European, and Afro-Latino composers. Within each section composers are arranged alphabetically; each entry provides biographical information as well as commission, duration, instrumentation, date of publication, premiere, publisher, discography for each composition. Backmatter includes a Brass Music Index which groups the music by numbers, medium, and ensembles; a title index; discography; and bibliography. As with the earlier volumes, this is an essential reference tool for anyone with an interest in researching and/or performing the music of black composers.

Blackness in Opera critically examines the intersections of race and music in the multifaceted genre of opera. A diverse cross-section of scholars places well-known operas (Porgy and Bess, Aida, Treemonisha) alongside lesser-known works such as Frederick Delius's Koanga, William Grant Still's Blue Steel, and Clarence Cameron White's Ouanga! to reveal a new historical context for re-imagining race and blackness in opera. The volume brings a wide-ranging, theoretically informed, interdisciplinary approach to questions about how blackness has been represented in these operas, issues surrounding characterization of blacks, interpretation of racialized roles by blacks and whites, controversies over race in the theatre and the use of blackface, and extensions of blackness along the spectrum from grand opera to musical theatre and film. In addition to essays by scholars, the book also features reflections by renowned American tenor George Shirley.   Contributors are Naomi André, Melinda Boyd, Gwynne Kuhner Brown, Karen M. Bryan, Melissa J. de Graaf, Christopher R. Gauthier, Jennifer McFarlane-Harris, Gayle Murchison, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., Eric Saylor, Sarah Schmalenberger, Ann Sears, George Shirley, and Jonathan O. Wipplinger.

Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music documents the variety of musics-from traditional Asian through jazz, classical, and pop-that have been created by Asian Americans. This book is not about "Asian American music" but rather about Asian Americans making music. This key distinction allows the author to track a wide range of musical genres. Wong covers an astonishing variety of music, ethnically as well as stylistically: Laotian song, Cambodian music drama, karaoke, Vietnamese pop, Japanese American taiko, Asian American hip hop, and panethnic Asian American improvisational music (encompassing jazz and avant-garde classical styles). In Wong's hands these diverse styles coalesce brilliantly around a coherent and consistent set of questions about what it means for Asian Americans to make music in environments of inter-ethnic contact, about the role of performativity in shaping social identities, and about the ways in which commercially and technologically mediated cultural production and reception transform individual perceptions of time, space, and society. Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music encompasses ethnomusicology, oral history, Asian American studies, and cultural performance studies. It promises to set a new standard for writing in these fields, and will raise new questions for scholars to tackle for many years to come.

Musicians of Asian descent enjoy unprecedented prominence in concert halls, conservatories, and classical music performance competitions. In the first book on the subject, Mari Yoshihara looks into the reasons for this phenomenon, starting with her own experience of learning to play piano in Japan at the age of three. Yoshihara shows how a confluence of culture, politics and commerce after the war made classical music a staple in middle-class households, established Yamaha as the world's largest producer of pianos and gave the Suzuki method of music training an international clientele. Soon, talented musicians from Japan, China and South Korea were flocking to the United States to study and establish careers, and Asian American families were enrolling toddlers in music classes. Against this historical backdrop, Yoshihara interviews Asian and Asian American musicians, such as Cho-Liang Lin, Margaret Leng Tan, Kent Nagano, who have taken various routes into classical music careers. They offer their views about the connections of race and culture and discuss whether the music is really as universal as many claim it to be. Their personal histories and Yoshihara's observations present a snapshot of today's dynamic and revived classical music scene.

Western music reached China nearly four centuries ago, with the arrival of Christian missionaries, yet only within the last century has Chinese music absorbed its influence. As China and the West demonstrates, the emergence of "Westernized" music from China--concurrent with the technological advances that have made global culture widely accessible--has not established a prominent presence in the West. China and the West brings together essays on centuries of Sino-Western musical exchange by musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and music theorists from around the world. It opens with a look at theoretical approaches of prior studies of musical encounters and a comprehensive survey of the intercultural and cross-cultural theoretical frameworks--exoticism, orientalism, globalization, transculturation, and hybridization--that inform these essays. Part I focuses on the actual encounters between Chinese and European musicians, their instruments and institutions, and the compositions inspired by these encounters, while Part II examines theatricalized and mediated East-West cultural exchanges, which often drew on stereotypical tropes, resulting in performances more inventive than accurate. Part III looks at the musical language, sonority, and subject matters of "intercultural" compositions by Eastern and Western composers. Essays in Part IV address reception studies and consider the ways in which differences are articulated in musical discourse by actors serving different purposes, whether self-promotion, commercial marketing, or modes of nationalistic--even propagandistic--expression. The volume's extensive bibliography of secondary sources will be invaluable to scholars of music, contemporary Chinese culture, and the globalization of culture.

Over the past four decades, the "globalized" aspects of cultural circulation have received the majority of scholarly-and consumer-attention, particularly in the study of South Asian music. As a result, a broad range of community-based and other locally focused performance traditions in the regions of South Asia have remained relatively unexplored. Theorizing the Local provides a challenging and compelling counterperspective to the "globalized," arguing for the value of comparative microstudies that are not concerned primarily with the flow of capital and neoliberal politics. What does it mean for musical activities to be local in an increasingly interconnected world? To what extent can theoretical activity be localized to the very acts of making music, interacting, and composing? Theorizing the Local offers glimpses into rich musical worlds of south and west Asia, worlds which have never before been presented in a single volume. The authors cross the traditional borders of scholarship and region, exploring in unmatched detail a vast array of musical practices and significant ethnographic discoveries-from Nepal to India, India to Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Iran. Enriched by audio and video tracks on an extensive companion Web site, Theorizing the Local is an important study of South Asian musical traditions that offers a broader understanding of 21st-century music of the world.

Looking at musical globalization and vocal music, this collection of essays studies the complex relationship between the human voice and cultural identity in 20th- and 21st-century music in both East Asian and Western music. The authors approach musical meaning in specific case studies against the background of general trends of cultural globalization and the construction/deconstruction of identity produced by human (and artificial) voices. The essays proceed from different angles, notably sociocultural and historical contexts, philosophical and literary aesthetics, vocal technique, analysis of vocal microstructures, text/phonetics-music-relationships, historical vocal sources or models for contemporary art and pop music, and areas of conflict between vocalization, "ethnicity," and cultural identity. They pinpoint crucial topical features that have shaped identity-discourses in art and popular musical situations since the1950s, with a special focus on the past two decades. The volume thus offers a unique compilation of texts on the human voice in a period of heightened cultural globalization by utilizing systematic methodological research and firsthand accounts on compositional practice by current Asian and Western authors.

Claiming Diaspora explores the thriving contemporary musical culture of Asian/Chinese America. Ranging from traditional operas to modern instrumental music, from ethnic media networks to popular music, from Asian American jazz to the work of recent avant-garde composers, author Su Zhengreveals the rich and diverse musical activities among Chinese Americans and tells of the struggles and creative searches by Chinese Americans to gain a foothold in the American cultural terrain. In doing so, she not only tells their stories, but also examines the transnational and racializedexperiences of this musical culture, challenging us to take a fresh look at the increasingly plural and complex nature of American cultural identity.Until recently, two intersected models have dominated studies of Asian American cultural expressions. The notion of "claiming America" has been a fundamental political strategy for the Asian American movement; while the Americanization model for European immigrants has minimized the impact of the"old country" on immigrant life and cultural expression. In Claiming Diaspora, Zheng critically analyzes the controversies surrounding these two models. She unveils the fluid and evolving nature of music in Chinese America, discussing current cultural struggles, while acknowledging an unavoidableconnection to a history of Asian exclusion in the U.S. Furthermore, Zheng breaks from traditional approaches which have portrayed the music of non-Western people as rooted and immobile to examine the concept of "diaspora" in the context of Asian American experiences and cultural theories of space,place, and displacement. She calls into question the contested meaning of "Asian American" and "Asian American cultural identity" in cultural productions, and builds a comprehensive picture of community and cultural transformation in Chinese and Asian America.Zheng taps unpublished historical sources of immigrant narrative songs, extensive fieldwork in New York City and China, in-depth interviews in which musicians narrate their life stories and music experiences, and her own longstanding involvement as community member, musician, presenter, andcultural broker. The book delineates the introduction of each music genre from its homeland and its subsequent development in New York, and explains how Chinese Americans express their cultural longings and belongings. Ultimately, Zheng reveals how Chinese American musical activities both reflectand contribute to local, national, and transnational cultural politics.

This book is a one-stop reference resource for the vast variety of musical expressions of the First Peoples' cultures of North America, both past and present. Encyclopedia of Native American Music of North America documents the surprisingly varied musical practices among North America's First Peoples, both historically and in the modern context. It supplies a detailed yet accessible and approachable overview of the substantial contributions and influence of First Peoples that can be appreciated by both native and nonnative audiences, regardless of their familiarity with musical theory. The entries address how ethnomusicologists with Native American heritage are revolutionizing approaches to the discipline, and showcase how musicians with First Peoples' heritage are influencing modern musical forms including native flute, orchestral string playing, gospel, and hip hop. The work represents a much-needed academic study of First Peoples' musical cultures--a subject that is of growing interest to Native Americans as well as nonnative students and readers. Provides print and Internet resources with each entry Presents exclusive information derived from the personal research and fieldwork of the editors Includes a timeline that highlights important developments in First Peoples' musical expressions Supplies an index that allows users to easily look up all of the relevant information on a topic

Natalie Curtis Burlin (1876–1921) was born to a wealthy New York City family and initially trained for a career as a classical concert pianist. But in 1903, she left her family and training behind to study, collect, and popularize the music of American Indians in the Southwest and African Americans at the Hampton Institute in the belief that the music of these groups could help forge a distinctive American identity in a time of dramatic social change.   Michelle Wick Patterson examines the life, work, and legacy of Curtis at the turn of the century. The influence of increased industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and shaken social mores motivated Curtis to emphasize Native and African American contributions to the antimodernist discourse of this period. Additionally, Curtis’s work in the field and her actions with informants reflect the impact of the changing status of women in public life, marriage, and the professions as well as new ideas regarding race and culture.   Many of the people who touched Curtis’s life were among the intellectual, political, and artistic leaders of their time, including Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Lummis, Franz Boas, George Foster Peabody, and others. This well-researched and richly textured portrait of Curtis illuminates the life and contributions of an important early ethnomusicologist, meticulously portraying her within the social, intellectual, and political developments of the day.

The representation of non-Western cultures in opera has long been a focus of critical inquiry, however, the diverse relationships between opera and First Nations and indigenous cultures have received less attention. Opera Indigene addresses the changing historical depictions of indigenous cultures in opera and the more contemporary hybridizations of the form by indigenous and First Nations artists. Drawing upon postcolonial theory, ethnomusicology, cultural geography and critical discourses on nationalism and multiculturalism, the collection brings together experts on opera and music in Canada, the Americas and Australia.

The first general reference work on Latin American choral music, this research guide catalogs composers and their works from 1550 to the present. It provides bio-bibliographical and stylistic information about composers and detailed information about specific works, including choral and instrumental requirements, and duration and source information such as publishers, manuscripts, locations, and recordings. In addition to the main catalog, the volume offers a brief history of music in Latin America emphasizing choral music; a guide to research in the field; bibliographies of literature on the subject, of biographies, and of periodicals; and a discography with library holdings. Useful appendixes list music publishers and recording companies of Latin American classical music; scholars, research institutions, and schools of music in the United States with a special interest in Latin American music; scholars, research institutions, and schools of music in Latin America; and music archives in Latin America. A comprehensive research tool for Latin American choral music, this volume will also serve scholars and researchers as a basic guide to sources for Latin American classical music. Both scholarly and practical, it will be valuable for choruses, orchestras, and other performing groups.

Experiencing Latin American Music draws on human experience as a point of departure for musical understanding. Students explore broad topics--identity, the body, religion, and more--and relate these to Latin American musics while refining their understanding of musical concepts and cultural-historical contexts. With its brisk and engaging writing, this volume covers nearly fifty genres and provides both students and instructors with online access to audio tracks and listening guides. A detailed instructor's packet contains sample quizzes, clicker questions, and creative, classroom-tested assignments designed to encourage critical thinking and spark the imagination. Remarkably flexible, this innovative textbook empowers students from a variety of disciplines to study a subject that is increasingly relevant in today's diverse society.    In addition to the instructor's packet, online resources for students include: customized Spotify playlist online listening guides audio sound links to reinforce musical concepts stimulating activities for individual and group work

A reference guide to the vast array of art song literature and composers from Latin America, this book introduces the music of Latin America from a singer's perspective and provides a basis for research into the songs of this richly musical area of the world. The book is divided by country into 22 chapters, with each chapter containing an introductory essay on the music of the region, a catalog of art songs for that country, and a list of publishers. Some chapters include information on additional sources. Singers and teachers may use descriptive annotations (language, poet) or pedagogical annotations (range, tessitura) to determine which pieces are appropriate for their voices or programming needs, or those of their students. The guide will be a valuable resource for vocalists and researchers, however familiar they may be with this glorious repertoire.

Building on the strengths of the first edition, the second edition of Latin American Classical Composers: A Biographical Dictionary presents expanded and updated coverage of its topic with an aim to be comprehensive. The authors have conducted exhaustive research to fill in gaps and correct minor errors in the first edition, adding young composers and documenting deaths since 1996, when the first edition appeared. Hundreds of composers are represented in this volume, which presents biographical data, including dates of birth and death, personal information about composers' background and training, and a selective listing of each composer's works. Sources for further study are noted within each entry. An index of composers by country rounds out this work.

This collection of new interviews with twenty-five accomplished female composers substantially advances our knowledge of the work, experiences, compositional approaches, and musical intentions of a diverse group of creative individuals. With personal anecdotes and sometimes surprising intimacy and humor, these wide-ranging conversations represent the diversity of women composing music in the United States from the mid-twentieth century into the twenty-first. The composers work in a variety of genres including classical, jazz, multimedia, or collaborative forms for the stage, film, and video games. Their interviews illuminate questions about the status of women composers in America, the role of women in musical performance and education, the creative process and inspiration, the experiences and qualities that contemporary composers bring to their craft, and balancing creative and personal lives. Candidly sharing their experiences, advice, and views, these vibrant, thoughtful, and creative women open new perspectives on the prospects and possibilities of making music in a changing world.

Updates and expands Claghorn's previous book, Women Composers and Hymnists (Scarecrow, 1984), presenting succinct biographies for female composers in both secular and sacred music.

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The book presents an in depth analysis of the choral compositions of Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, and Thea Musgrave, complete with musical examples and texts. The introductory chapter gives historical perspective and places Lutyens, Maconchy and Musgrave in the context of twentieth-century British musical culture.

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Jackson has culminated her lifelong research in producing this bibliographically arranged guide. "Say Can You Deny Me" lists the locations of the printed and manuscript sources of Renaissance, baroque, classic, and some early romantic women composers. With listings from over 400 libraries worldwide, the guide is the definitive work documenting a substantial contribution to the world of music by women.

This updated, expanded, and reorganized edition of Women and Music features even more women composers, performers, and patrons, even more musical contexts, and an expanded view of women in music outside Europe and North America. A popular university textbook, Women and Music is enlightening for scholars, a good source of programming ideas for performers, and a pleasure for other music lovers.

Why is music composed by women so marginal to the standard 'classical' repertoire? In attempting to answer this fundamental question, this book examines the practices and attitudes that have led to the exclusion of women composers from the received 'canon' of performed musical works. Focusing on the tradition since 1800, Marcia J. Citron makes substantial use of feminist and interdisciplinary theory. After introducing the notion of canon and its role in cultural discourse, she explores important elements of canon formation: creativity, professionalism, music as gendered discourse, and reception. A final chapter provides a critique of many of these ideas with respect to the canon of the university music history curriculum. Professor Citron shows how an understanding of canon formation illuminates some of the basic issues that affect the discipline as a whole.

In the world of musical composition, men have long overshadowed women. But as the prominence of women composers increases, so does interest in their lives and works. This is the first substantive biographical reference book geared toward the student or non-specialist, featuring information on nearly 200 women composers of the Western music tradition from the 9th century to the 2st. Composers were chosen based on the excellence of their music, their importance in the period's daily musical life, and the availability of information on their lives, music, and recordings. Taken together, they represent a broad range of styles, countries, and eras. This book is a valuable resource for students from high school through university, and for anyone interested in musical history and composers. The book is arranged by style of music and chronology. Each profiled composer placed is related to the famous male composers, arts, sciences, and politics of her period. Profiles include biographical information and focus on the composer's work and association with other musicians. Also included for each composer are a discography of her recorded works (including a list of those available in modern editions) and a bibliography of additional print and electronic resources. Timelines place the women in historical context and appendixes organize them by country, century, and type of music. A syllabus of study is provided.

In this vibrant and pioneering book, Nadine Hubbs shows how a gifted group of Manhattan-based gay composers were pivotal in creating a distinctive "American sound" and in the process served as architects of modern American identity. Focusing on a talented circle that included Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Paul Bowles, David Diamond, and Ned Rorem, The Queer Composition of America's Sound homes in on the role of these artists' self-identification--especially with tonal music, French culture, and homosexuality--in the creation of a musical idiom that even today signifies "America" in commercials, movies, radio and television, and the concert hall.

A diverse repertoire of art songs for piano and voice The art song--a delicate and inspiring blend of mu­sic and poetry--has been performed by singers and pianists and appreciated by audiences around the world for more than two hundred years. While collec­tions of art songs abound, this welcome volume and its accompanying compact discs make readily avail­able the contributions of contemporary African American composers to the popular genre. Including thirty-nine pieces for voice and piano created since 1968 by eighteen artists, ANew Anthology of Art Songs by African American Composers navigates a varied musical terrain from classical European tradi­tions to jazz and spirituals. With nearly half of the featured songs composed by women and with others by lesser-known and emerging composers, this im­portant collection offers a diverse, representative sampling of African American art songs and works to secure the places of these songs and artists in the canon of contemporary American music. Selected by Jeanine Wagner and Margaret R. Simmons, prolific and celebrated performers who have presented recitals throughout the world featur­ing the art songs of African American composers, this dazzling new repertoire of twentieth-century music is cogently framed by a thorough introduction and sub­stantial biographies of each composer. The compact discs feature piano tracks of all thirty-nine composi­tions. The featured composers are H. Leslie Adams, Mable Bailey, Charles S. Brown, Wallace McClain Cheatham, Adolphus Hailstork, Jacqueline B. Hairston, William H. Henderson, Jeraldine Saunders Herbison, Betty Jackson King, William Foster McDaniel, Undine Smith Moore, Byron Motley, Bar­bara Sherrill, Robert Owens, Nadine Shanti, Frederick Tillis, Dolores White, and Julius P. Williams.

for solo piano All five volumes of Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora are presented together in a clothbound edition for easier accessibility. This comprehensive volume is ideal for university and college libraries and includes three new advanced pieces by composers living in Egypt, the US, and Guadeloupe.

"... a valuable resource for students and teachers, women and men, who wish to enlarge their understanding of women's contributions to classical new music." --Women & Music "... an important collection that should quickly find its way into courses on the music of our century.... This anthology offers a significant step toward our richer understanding of musical expressiveness in the late twentieth century." --Notes The creativity of women in contemporary art, literature, and general culture is well recognized, but their excellence in musical composition remains largely unrecognized. To remedy that oversight, this book brings together scores by 30 composers from around the world in a single, accessible collection encompassing concert and religious music as well as jazz, pop, experimental, and cross-over works. Each piece is introduced by a short biography of the composer, including the formative influences on her life, her role models, the obstacles she encountered, the recognition she has attained, bibliographic references, and discographies.

.."". will enlighten students of music history and serve as a source of programming ideas for performers."" -- Library Journal .."". a significant contribution to the literature about, and the music of, women composers."" -- American Music Teacher