Resistance Through Music: Florence Price

Contributed

As part of Gannon University's Black History Month celebrations, Michelle Cann, Grammy-award-winning pianist, will perform Florence Price's music, featuring accompaniment from the Erie Philharmonic Orchestra.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 19

During a time when African Americans were few and far between on the classical music scene, Florence Price struck a chord.

"The occasion was the 1933 World's Fair," explained Carolyn Baugh, event organizer for Resistance Through Music: Florence Price, a free concert celebrating Black History Month. "There was yearly a competition put on by the Wanamaker company (a former department store) for composers to submit their work for cash prizes."

Price came out on top and became the first African American woman to have her work performed by a major symphony orchestra.

Since the World's Fair took place in Chicago that year, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her symphony. Like local classical musician Harry T. Burleigh, Price was part of a group of African American composers that made major contributions to classical music. Now, residents have a chance to hear it live.

Michelle Cann, Grammy-award-winning pianist and foremost interpreter of Price's music, will perform Price's Sonata in E minor and her Concerto in D minor, featuring musicians from the Erie Philharmonic Orchestra.

The event is part of Gannon University's Black History Month celebration. Baugh, a professor, noted that Price's life spans many critical periods, having been born right at the end of the Reconstruction Era, living through Jim Crow, and participating in the Great Migration and the Chicago Renaissance movement.

"Florence Price's life is a lesson to me in resilience," Baugh said. "I'm so impressed by someone who could function in the social and political climate that she endured as an African American woman, a single mom, in the first half of the 20th century in the United States. And still could transcend her setting to the extent that she could produce all of this incredible music, which is not just beautiful but technically refined."

7:30 p.m. // First Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, 250 W. 7th St. // Free and open to the public // For more information, visit: tinyurl.com/GUFlorencePrice.