#classicalmusic

Birth of Modern Music Series 8: Margaret Bonds

On this episode of Sonosphere we highlight the life and compositions of composer Margaret Bonds. So many people who made invaluable contributions to classical music have been nearly lost to history or are underappreciated in their time. Bonds is one of those characters. 

We learned more about her when we covered one of her mentors, American composer Florence B. Price earlier in 2021 – be sure to check  out that episode. Bonds like Price is lesser known in the field of classical music – being both female and African-American – often not covered among classical European-based composers dominating the history of classical music. 

Sonosphere has covered women in classical and electronic music, like Pauline Oliveros, and we hope to continue covering lesser known great composers of our time.

Today we are covering the life and composition of pianist and composer Margaret Bonds. Bonds was born in Chicago in 1913 to musical parents. Margaret Bonds was a music prodigy, and by age 13 she had begun to compose. At age 16 she enrolled at Northwestern University, where she won awards in piano and composition. Bonds experienced success as a performer and composer in the world of classical music, but she went beyond the limitations of the genre. 

She wrote music for Cab Calloway, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Louis Armstrong, and Woody Herman as well as radio and television specials. Later in life Bonds moved to Los Angeles where she taught at the Los Angeles Inner City Institute and at the Inner City Cultural Center and worked for the movie studios.

We interviewed Anna Celenza, author and professor of music at Georgetown University. She wrote a whole host of books featuring musicians like Duke Ellington, Vivaldi, Gershwin and Bach. Celenza also put together an archive on Margaret Bonds, the digital version is available online as part of Georgetown University Library. 

We speak with her about the archive and more about Bonds.

While in Chicago, she regularly played piano at the Palmer House Hotel and tried her hand at songwriting. Activities such as these increased when she moved to New York in 1939. Many of her songs, like “Peachtree Street,” tapped into trends in popular culture. Others confronted social issues connected with civil rights. The lyrics to “Three Wise Monkeys” references the racist viewpoints of three southern politicians: Theodore Bilbo, Eugene Talmadge and John E. Rankin. 

Bonds’ lifelong friendship with poet Langston Hughes yielded numerous settings of his poetry, including some of Hughes’ most iconic poems like I, Too and The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Bonds’ daughter, Djane Richardson, referred to Hughes as “Uncle Langston.”

Bonds died four years before the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 and she didn’t leave a will. Her only heir, daughter Djane Richardson, died in 2011 without any heirs and also without leaving a will. The copyright status of Bonds’ work is unclear – no one knows, at this point, who controls the copyrights, which remain in effect for many more decades. As a result, performances and recordings of her music are complicated. One of Bonds’ largest and perhaps most important works–Montgomery Variations, written in 1965 during the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March and dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.–has never been performed. And it may not enter the public domain until 2042 at the earliest.

We are lucky however that much of her work is available. Her spiritual Troubled Water, has been recorded many times. Her Christmas cantata, The Ballad of the Brown King, which features the poetry of Langston Hughes, was performed recently at Georgetown University where Bonds’ archives are kept. 

Black Swan Records

Welcome to Sonosphere the podcast that explores the sounds all around us, in art and music movements through history.

Today we discuss the first black owned recording company Black Swan Records which sold popular music to black audiences. Its existence was brief, it was only active for two years from 1923 to 1925. During this time however, the label released over 180 records – more than any other black owned record company until the 1950s. Today we’ll talk about the historical context in which the founder, Harry Pace, began and operated the label with mentor W.E.B. DuBois and how his partnership with Memphis blues man W.C. Handy kicked off Pace’s interest in the music industry.

We begin our story of Black Swan Records by setting the context of the times. Performers of recorded songs were becoming pop icons and American celebrities. By the end of WWI recorded music began to take precedence over live performances as proof of musicianship. There is not a lot of information on Black Swan Records, we rely mostly on a website called Black Past, and two dissertations by graduate students Stuart Lucas Tully from LSU, and Jacqueline Brellenthin from Univ of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as well as David Suisman’s  Co- workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Black Swan Records and the Political Economy of African American Music.

According to David Suisman writing about the Political Economy of African American music, “Black Swan’s burden was to chart a course between elite culture and popular culture, between the color blindness of music and the racism of the music business, between ideologically based enterprise and the impinging realities of capitalist markets.”

Singer and actor Ethel Waters wearing costume and seated backstage, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, February – April 1940. (Photo by Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris/Carnegie Museum of Art/Getty Images)
James P. Johnson

Founder, Harry Pace was viewed as a key figure along with W.E.B. DuBois in personifying black entrepreneurialism in the 20th century and beyond.

Track List:

  1. Alberta Hunter – He’s a Darn Good Man
  2. Mamie Smith – Crazy Blues
  3. James P. Johnson – If I could be with you
  4. Ethel Waters – Down Home Blues
  5. James P. Johnson – Liza
  6. W.C. Handy – St. Louis Blues
  7. W.C. Handy – Yellow Dog Blues
  8. Katie Crippen – Blind Man Blues
  9. Carroll Clark – Carry me back to Tennessee
  10. James P. Johnson – Charleston
  11. Charles Wakefield Cadman – At Dawning (David Wright)
  12. James P. Johnson – Snowy Morning Blues
  13. James P. Johnson – Blue Note Boogie
  14. Ethel Waters – I got Rhythm
  15. Mamie Smith – Da Da Strain

Underscore: Christian Fennesz

Today on Sonosphere Amy talks with Christian Fennesz, electronic music composer and musician. Amy caught up with Fennesz at the annual Big Ears Festival in Knoxville. As the first in-person fest in two years, Big Ears was bigger than ever. Acts from all over the nation and the world descended upon the smokey mountain city and brought amazing sounds, visuals, and excellence in musical composition. Always a Sonosphere favorite!

Amy and Fennesz at Big Ears 2022

Join Chris and Amy live from WYXR studio in Memphis for some tunes by Fennesz and collaborators like Sparklehorse, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ulver, and more! Christian Fennesz left for his U.S. tour after Big Ears. For more information on Fennesz please visit his website.

Fennesz performing at Big Ears 2022

Track List:

  1. Fennesz/Ulver – Only the Poor Have to Travel
  2. King Midas Sound/Fennesz – On my Mind
  3. Fennesz/David Sylvian – Transit
  4. Glenn Gould Gathering
  5. Sparklehorse, PJ Harvey – Piano Fire
  6. Sparklehorse/Fennesz – Goodnight Sweetheart
  7. Fennesz/Ryuichi Sakamoto – Haru
  8. Tim Hecker – Celestina
  9. Jim O’Rourke/Sonic Youth – Hungara Vivo
  10. Oneohtrix Point Never – Auto & Allo
  11. Jensen Sportag – Rain Code (Fennesz Remix)

Black Opera: Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, the Black Swan

Welcome to Sonosphere on WYXR 91.7 FM or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today on the show we feature Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield aka Black Swan in the vocal concert tradition of late 19th century America.

We will hear from Professor Adam Gustafson who has written about Greenfield as America’s first black pop star for The Conversation an academic journal and is a professor of music at Penn State. We talk about the Greenfield’s early life and rise in the operatic and pop scene in the 19th century.

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield came of age in antebellum America and grew her career at a time when European operatic, concert songs made singers like Jenny Lind and Catherine Hayes rich and famous.

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, a.k.a. Black Swan

The concert soprano, Greenfield, was different. She was born a slave in Mississippi and raised by an abolitionist in Philadelphia. When she hit the pop scene in the 1850s, in Professor Gustafson words, she “shattered preexisting beliefs about artistry and race.”

In this show we’ll also exclusively hear black opera singers from Leontyn Price and Jessye Norman to Terrance Blanchard’s Fire Shut up in my Bones, which premiered at the New York Metropolitan Opera earlier this year. While there is no known recording of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, we will hear Revella Hughes, another great soprano from the 1920s, and maybe one of the first African American opera singers ever recorded. We’ll hear a phonograph recording from 1921 from the Black Swan record label, the label named for Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield.

Thanks for joining us.

Tracklist:

Norma Act 1: Casta Dive (1980) Vincenzo Bellini, Leontyne Price, Henry Lewis

Dido and Aeneas, Z. 626 / Act 3 Henry Purcell, Jessye Norman, English Chamber Orchestra, Raymond Leopard

Porgy and Bess / Act 2 George Gershwin, Willard White, Leona Mitchell, Cleveland Orchestra

Dream with Me – Peter Pan Leonard Bernstein, Harolyn Blackwell

Tosca Act 2: Vissi d’arte, Vissi d’amore Giacomo Puccini, Leontyne Price (1963)

Green Finch and Linnet Bird (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street) Stephen Sondheim, Harolyn Blackwell

Vier letze Lieder, 2 September Richard Strauss, Jessye Norman

Peculiar Grace (Fire Shut Up in my Bones) Terrance Blanchard, Will Liverman

At Dawning Charles Wakefield Cadman, Revella Hughes

Underscore: Composer Alex Weston

Welcome to Sonosphere’s Underscore series where we highlight composers, artists, creators, and more. This episode we highlight Alex Weston,  a New York-based composer. 

AW Terrorbird

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with a composition degree, he then moved to New York. We’ll discuss his time working as music assistant to composer Philip Glass, helping Glass with various film and concert pieces, while also pursuing his own writing. Weston’s music showcases his wide-ranging influences, combining classical structures along with more modern harmonic language, and electronics.

Weston’s music has also been featured on “The Affair” (Showtime), the Ken Burns-produced documentary “The Emperor of All Maladies” (PBS), and various projects for NBC, Netflix and others. His film scores have premiered at festivals around the world including Sundance, and Slamdance.

He’s had concert works commissioned by the Lyrica Chamber Music Ensemble, the Utah Wind Symphony, MADArt Creative, Ballet in the City, and more, including a recent performance at the John F. Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts.

farewell artThis month he released his score for the Lulu Wang film The Farewell. On this episode we talk with him about his process for The Farewell and his approach to music in film versus his approach to commissioned works for live dance and others. Enjoy this month’s Underscore.

 

okkyung lee

Korean cellist, composer, and improviser, Okkyung Lee talks with Sonosphere about her time at this year’s Big Ears festival in Knoxville, TN, working with Evan Parker, learning to love the cello, and what’s in store for her this year.

 

 

Join us!

 

IMG_1005

Okkyung Lee performing at Big Ears Knoxville 2018

Iceberg New Music Collective Visits Memphis

New York City-based composer collective ICEBERG New Music was in residence at Crosstown Arts here in Memphis for two weeks of concerts, workshops, and lectures back in June of 2017. 

IMG_3056

We spoke with composers from the second of the two concerts in the Crosstown Arts series, and attended their workshops and lectures that ranged from a “Sound Scavenger Hunt” to a lecture on “Popular and Classical Music in 1960s America.” Memphis-based contemporary chamber group Blueshift Ensemble collaborated with ICEBERG and performed the collective’s original compositions for the concert series.

I hope you enjoy our talk about Iceberg’s mission, the future of new music, collaboration, blending genre’s and more!

 

 

Special thanks to Iceberg New Music, Jenny Davis and the Blueshift Ensemble, and Justin Thompson and the whole Crosstown Arts Community.

Track listing:

Alex Burtzos – OMAHA (all the things you could be you are you were) for string quartet

Drake Andersen – Photons for flute and clarinet

Yu-Chun Chien – Co-Composition for a cellist

Jonathan Russ – Eat Your Vegetables for solo clarinet

Harry Stafylakis – Unrelent for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion

Songs for the Youth: Music of Stockhausen

WWII wreaked havoc in the world, as Schoenberg was fleeing Germany, young soldiers in Italy, Greece, Germany and Great Britain were fighting on all fronts – a few of these soldiers would become the leaders of the musical scene after WWII and they were stained by the tragedies they witnessed in this war, one of which was Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Hardly anyone had a lasting impact on electronic music as did Stockhausen.

This month’s podcast episode features Karlheinz Stockhausen – check out this playlist featuring his work.

 

The Birth of Modern Music Series Part 4: Olivier Messiaen

Welcome back to Sonosphere’s Birth of Modern Music series featuring modern European, classical composers that inspired the experimental, avant garde art and music scenes of the 50s, 60s and resonate in music composition today.

In the first episode of the series we highlighted Arnold Schoenberg whose atonal works ushered in a  new school  of composers. Then we moved to Erik Satie whose Vexations and other “sonic experiments” influenced his peers and John Cage who discovered the piece years later.  After that we covered Edgard Varese, a peculiar composer who sculpted sounds in a way never accomplished previously. Today we will delve into the life and works of Olivier Messiaen.

Messiaen escaped the world of composition’s shift to serialism through religion, nature, and birdsong, but he had a profound influence on the evolution of electronic music composition through composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, and Xenakis. 

Join us by subscribing on iTunes and following us on Soundcloud, Facebook, and Twitter.

Thanks for listening!

Songs in this month’s episode:

  1. Des Canyons Aux Etoiles I: Le Desert
  2. Des Canyons Aux Etoiles II: Les Orioles
  3. Preludes: La Colombe (The Dove)
  4. Quartet for the End of Time
  5. Turangalila – Symphonie
  6. Mode de valeurs et d’intensites
  7. Meditations sur le mystere de la Sainte Trinite

 

photo: Catalogue d’Oiseaux: styriarte.com

The Birth of Modern Music Series Part 3: Edgard Varese

Varese searched for the modern sound, the sound that would define his generation. Like Schoenberg before him, Varese’s early atonal period broke down language and form into a stream of sensations – “his screaming chords seemed to have no emotion tied to them, no history or future” – just very present in the now.

Join us on the journey through the life and mind of French American composer Edgard Varese.