African American composers featured in Tuesday recital

Pianist Vicky Griswold is also proprietor of the Plainfield Music Store.

Plainfielders will get a special treat Tuesday evening at a piano recital by our own Vicky Griswold that honors both Women's History Month and Black History Month.

Underwritten by the Plainfield Cultural and Heritage Commission, the program features music by women composers from the 18th to the 20th centuries.

Of especial interest are compositions by two groundbreaking African American women composers of the 20th century -- Florence Price and Margaret Bonds.

Florence Price (1887-1953)

Margaret Bonds (1913-1972)

Florence Price was the first African American woman composer to achieve national recognition, studying with composer George Chadwick and graduating from the New England Conservatory -- with a diploma in organ, itself a remarkable accomplishment in the times. Writing in a range from piano to arrangements of spirituals to large orchestral pieces, she had several compositions performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The sonata on Tuesday's program rejoices in its African American and American flavors, with syncopated rhythms, snatches of spirituals and Gershwinesque harmonies.

Margaret Bonds, a generation younger, and a student not only of Florence Price, but also the composer Roy Harris, also received wide acclaim during her lifetime. She was particularly known for her settings of the poems of Langston Hughes, especially 'The Ballad of the Brown King' and 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers'. Tuesday's recital features 'Troubled Waters', an improvisation on the spiritual 'Wade in the Water', and blends European and jazz idioms.

Other composers featured on the program are Fanny Mendelssohn, older sister of Felix; the Polish divorcée (!) Maria Szymankowska, who was appointed to the Russian court; Marianne Martines, who studied with Haydn and was a duet partner of Mozart's; and Clara Wieck Schumann, who concertized widely and was the champion of her husband Robert's works.

A reception honoring the artist will follow the recital.

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A RECITAL BY VICTORIA GRISWOLD

A Program of Women Composers

Tuesday, March 25, 2008
7:00 PM
Plainfield Public Library
8th Street at Park Avenue

The Public Is Cordially Invited

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-- Dan Damon

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