Florence Price on Juneteenth

We enjoyed watching and listening, by way of our television set, to the festivities over at the Obama Center yesterday, and though the time we will spend there this summer will be on the grounds and in the areas accessible to the public without tickets, we look forward to being able to get tickets and experience the whole center.

I understand that the musical choices made for the event were matters of personal taste (as musical choices always are and really always should be). But somehow musical traditions that are not necessarily popular tend to get left off the list. Again and again. And again and again.

I hope that at some point the people who are responsible for music at the Obama Center learn about South Side resident Florence Price, who lived on South Calumet Avenue (3835--the building no longer exists) from 1927 until she died in 1953. She taught at the Abraham Lincoln Centre (700 East Oakwood Blvd., it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), a building that shares a spirit similar to that of the Obama Center.

[Update: I just learned that the Chicago Philharmonic is playing something by Price on their July 27th concert at the Obama Center.]

Tonight, in Vienna, Austria, the Vienna Philharmonic is playing my arrangement of Florence Price's "Adoration" as part of their Sommernachtskonzert at the Schönbrunn Palace Gardens in Vienna. The concert begins at 8:45 (Vienna time), and admission is free.

It might be broadcast live somewhere in the United States on PBS, but I don't think I will be able to hear it live because the actual time of the concert for me will be at 3:45 a.m. tomorrow. I'm sure there will be YouTube options available to see and hear tomorrow.

What a great addition to the celebration of Juneteenth this is, and what a message it sends to the larger world about an important American cultural voice that resonates in the hearts of everyone who hears it or plays it.

I can take credit for a couple of things: I happened to know about Florence Price through an article about her in a magazine devoted to the work of women in music, and found a PDF of her "Adoration" in its original form as an organ piece in the IMSLP.

I can take credit for instantly recognizing that "Adoration" was a great piece of music, and I can take credit for using my composing and arranging skills to make an arrangement for violin and piano that would sound as much like an organ with the melody in a violin stop as possible. I can take credit for making an arrangement for strings that can sound lovely when played by musicians at all levels of competence. And I can take credit for keeping the music (now in a dozen or so arrangements for different instruments) in the public domain, and making it accessible to musicians all over the world for free.

But the music itself: the melody, the harmony, the phrases, and the rhythms, are all Florence Price's. I just did some effective translation.

Maybe the community of people who care deeply about the music that matters to me is not necessarily a local one, anywhere. But as a person who wrote music, taught in the community, played piano and organ in movie theaters before movies had sound, and contributed in myriad undocumented ways to the life of people in Chicago, particularly, I imagine, in the South Side, it would be nice if an organization like the Obama Center could embrace and amplify Florence Price and her work.