![]() Florence’s interest in music during these early years extended beyond piano to include lessons in organ and composition. Her talent was acknowledged very early, as evidenced by the presentation of her first recital at the age of four. All aspects of her early life disrupted the narratives that are often projected about black life in the post-Reconstruction South, as she grew up in a culture of affluence. ![]() Price was born Florence Beatrice Smith in 1882 in Little Rock, Arkansas. The music you will hear during this concert not only illuminates the vastness and diversity of Price and Bonds’ oeuvres, but it also brings into focus the continuum of intellectual activity that was nurtured in the interiority of black communities during the early 20th century. ![]() The concert would ultimately mark the beginning of a period of activity that not only linked the professional and musical lives of Bonds and Price, but also centered them within a larger movement focused on the elevation of black identity and black historical narratives through music. It marked the first time a major American orchestra performed a symphony written by a black female composer and, in the case of Bonds’ performance, the first instance in which a black concert pianist appeared as a soloist with the CSO. 1 in E minor and pianist Bonds performing John Alden Carpenter’s Concertino. The June concert of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra entitled “The Negro in Music”-featured as part of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair-consisted of the debut performance of Price’s Symphony No. ![]() In the summer of 1933, as the Negro Renaissance movement began to spread its ideological tentacles beyond the geographic and cultural boundaries of Harlem, Florence Price and Margaret Bonds stood on the precipice of music history, shifting the context of who was heard in American concert halls. ![]()
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