PriceFest

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2020, the University of Maryland launched PriceFest — an annual festival devoted to American composer Florence Price.

The plan was to stage performances of works in the context of lectures and panels devoted to this long-neglected African-American composer. The COVID-19 outbreak forced the first PriceFest to be an online event only, but that worked so well the 2021 PriceFest arranged for more livestreamed and interactive Zoom events.

When Florence Price died at 66 in 1953, she left behind instrumental, orchestra and vocal works that languished unperformed for decades until a revival of interest in music by women composers and composers of color led to a serious second look at her compositions and a rediscovery of their quality and importance.

In 2009, a couple renovating an abandoned and dilapidated house in St. Anne, Illinois once owned by Price found a substantial collection of previously unknown Price scores.

As Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker, commented, “not only did [Florence] Price fail to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration. That run-down house in St. Anne is a potent symbol of how a country can forget its cultural history.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Florence Price (1887-1953): Mississippi Suite; Women’s Philharmonic; Apo Hsu, conductor; Koch 75182