1963 and 1964 were extraordinary years in the American Civil Rights Movement. Brown v. Board of Education had outlawed school segregation, and by extension the long-standing “separate but equal” doctrine, a decade prior. The ensuing rush of civil action included the Montgomery bus boycott, sit ins-in across the southeastern United

Twelve years prior to composing her Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Florence Price had her first symphony premiered at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, and in doing so became the first black woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra. Following the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s performance,

The Myth On October 28, 1893, Tchaikovsky took to the podium to conduct the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, a monumental work as fraught with passion and vulnerability as it is defiant of convention. He died just nine days later. This strange and tragic proximity, especially in light of the

Born in London in 1839, Alice Mary Smith was the daughter of Elizabeth Lumley and Richard Smith, a wealthy lace merchant. Her earliest published work, the song “Weep no more!,” brought Smith to public attention in 1859. Her first large-scale work, the Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, was performed just

EVERYTHING’S READY: THE POEMAS IS ITS WAY, IS SILENT.BUT SUDDENLY THE THEME BREAKS OUTHAMMERS AT THE WINDOW LIKE A FIST,AND FROM FAR OFFA TERRIBLE SOUND WILL ANSWER THIS CHALLENGE —GURGLINGS, MOANS, SHRIEKS —AND THE APPARITION OF CROSSED HANDS… from Poem without a Heroby Anna Akhmatovatranslated by Lenore Mathew and William

[Musical notes to accompany Stage Director notes] Acoustic guitars struck with percussion mallets. Eerie harmonicas and muted horns. Dusky strings, brash woodwinds, a nagging harpsichord, and a percussive harp. The instrumentation of Missy Mazzoli’s score is a darkly prismatic soundscape that haunts the physical and emotional landscape of Proving Up.

[Musical notes to accompany Stage Director notes] Musical tones are always telling us something in The Rape of Lucretia . Sometimes they signify the most specific of things. Harpy mosquitos nag at the three generals. The humid air of their camp is thick with dusky, muted violins. The croaking of

The genesis of Coleridge-Taylor’s violin concerto is a story of two pioneering artists: the composer and his commissioner, Maud Powell. Powell became one of the first American violin virtuosos to gain international fame, and she did so decades before women in the U.S. even had the right to vote. She

“First there was a feeling of awe as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra…swung in to the beautiful, harmonious strains of a composition by a Race woman. And when, after the number was completed, the large auditorium, filled to the brim with music lovers of all races, rang out in applause for

Franz Liszt was best known during his lifetime as the lean, black-haired virtuoso whose skill and daring at the piano caused audiences to faint, exclaim, and otherwise lust over the music and the man. In 1844, journalist Heinrich Heine called the phenomenon “Lisztomania.” Yet just four years after Heine’s coinage,

As a composer, conductor, educator, pianist, and percussionist, José Pablo Moncayo built a legacy in Mexican music at a young age. In his few decades of study and professional activity, he produced numerous works for piano solo, chamber music with piano, other mixed chamber ensembles, symphonies and shorter works for