Nationality: American

Born in Jarratt, VA, Aug 25, 1904 
Died in Petersburg, VA, Feb 6, 1989 

• Moore was educated at Fisk University and Columbia University Teachers’ College. She also received honorary doctorates from Virginia State University and Indiana University.⁹
• Moore was a professor at Virginia State University in Petersburg, where her educational accomplishments included co-founding and co-directing the university’s Black Music Research Center.¹⁰
• Moore specialized in choral compositions and sacred music.¹¹
• Her oratorio on the life of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., Scenes from the Life of a Martyr, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1981.¹²

Biographical sketch from the Undine Smith Moore Collection at Indiana University, Bloomington 

Biography from African American Registry 

Biography from the African Diaspora Music Project 

Born in Winston-Salem, NC, June 14, 1932
Died in Chicago, IL, Mar 9, 2004

• Perkinson was named after the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.¹³
• Perkinson studied composition at the Manhattan School of Music and Princeton Univeristy. He studied conducting at the Berkshire Music Center.¹⁴
• Perkinson served as music director of institutions including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the American Theater Lab (with Jerome Robbins), and the Symphony of the New World, which he co-founded.¹⁵
• Perkinson served as Coordinator of Performance Activities at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago.¹⁶

Biography from Keiser Southern Music

Biography from AfriClassical

Born in Little Rock, AR, 9 April 1887 
Died in Chicago, IL, 3 June 1953 

Born Florence Beatrice Smith 

• Price was the first African-American woman to achieve national recognition as a composer. 
• Price studied at the New England Conservatory, and was also a student of George Whitefield Chadwick. 
• Price’s Symphony no. 1 in e minor won the Wanamaker Competition in 1932, which provided a premiere with the Chicago Symphony in 1933. This premiere constituted the first time a major American orchestra performed a work by an African-American woman. 
• Price was especially prolific and successful as a composer of art songs.¹⁵

Florence Price website maintained by Price scholar and Karen Walwyn 

Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Nov 2, 1875
Died in Los Angeles, Aug 29, 1946

• Anna Priscilla Risher was a composer, pianist, organist, cellist, violinist, and singer. Additionally, Risher was a respected painter and champion for women in classical music.
• Risher composed 350 works, including chamber music and large-scale orchestral works. She also published pedagogical piano technique books.
• In addition to composing, Risher established several music organizations, such as the Hollywood Women’s Symphony Orchestra.¹⁷

Biography

Born in Hammels Station, Long Island, NY, June 28, 1902
Died in New York, Dec 30, 1979¹⁸

Biography from Songwriters Hall of Fame

Born in New York, NY, Aug 4, 1910
Died in New York, NY, Feb 15, 1992

Biography

Born in Chicago, Dec 22, 1907
Died in Chicago, Feb 15, 1999

• Irene Britton Smith was a composer and educator of African-American, Crow, and Cherokee descent. Showing musical talent from an early age, Britton studied piano and violin. While she hoped to study music at university, due to financial constraints, Smith pursued a degree in education.
• In 1930, Smith began working in the Chicago Public Schools as an elementary school teacher. She would remain a public school teacher for over 40 years, though she never gave up pursuing music on the side.
  • In 1943, Smith earned a BM degree from American Conservatory of Music. In 1946, Smith took a sabbatical from teaching to study composition at the Juilliard School with Vittorio Giannini. She completed a MM degree in composition at DePaul University a decade later. Smith even spent a summer in France studying with legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger.
• As a composer, Smith wrote 36 works, over half for voice. She admired French neo-classical style, while her favorite composers were Tchaikovsky and Brahms.²¹

Born in Woodville, MS, May 11, 1895 
Died in Los Angeles, Dec 3, 1978 

• Still studied music at Oberlin College, and also studied composition privately with George Whitefield Chadwick and Edgard Varèse.
• Early in his career, Still worked as an arranger for W.C. Handy, Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw and many jazz artists.
• In 1931, the Rochester Philharmonic premiered his Afro-American Symphony, making him the first African-American composer to have a work played by a major American symphony orchestra.
• Other firsts in Still’s career:
  • He was the first African-American to conduct a major orchestra (the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1936) 
  • He was the first African-American composer to have an opera premiered by a major opera company (Troubled Island, New York City Opera, March 31, 1949)²³

Biography from William Grant Still Music: organization directed by Still descendants 

Born in Anderson, SC, Jan 28, 1887
Died in Hendersonville, NC, June 6, 1958

• Lily Strickland completed her formal training at the Institute of Musical Art in New York (now Julliard).
• As a composer, Strickland was consistently inspired by the music of diverse cultures throughout her career.
  • Earlier on, she was influenced by Black musical traditions and Native American melodies.
  • From 1920-29, Strickland lived in India, where she soon became fascinated with non-Western idioms.
  • *Note from Rebecca – I would recommend treading lightly when playing some of Strickland’s pieces. Though she studied the music of these diverse cultures to varying degrees, I can also see arguments made regarding cultural appropriation of these musical traditions.
• Strickland wrote about 400 pieces, including operettas, piano pieces, and songs, “Mah Lindy Lou” being the most popular among them.²⁵
• In addition to music, Strickland was also a writer, poet, and painter. She wrote numerous scholarly cultural articles, wrote the lyrics to her songs (in addition to standalone sonnets), and painted cover illustrations for many of her compositions.²⁶

Learn more:

Biography (written by the son of Strickland’s first cousin)
Short biography from the South Carolina Encyclopedia

Born in New York, NY, April 21, 1899 
Died in Cambridge, MA, July 9, 1984 

• Thompson’s teachers included Ernest Bloch and Francesco Malipiero. He won a Prix de Rome in 1922.²⁹
• When he was a student at Harvard, Thompson was failed his audition for the Glee Club. Regarding this rejection, Thompson said, “My life has been an attempt to strike back.”³⁰
• Thompson had a long and distinguished teaching career, at institutions including UC Berkeley, the Julliard School (where he taught Leonard Bernstein), and Harvard University.³¹
• Thompson is best known for his choral works, which include both sacred and secular motets and cantatas, a Requiem, and a Mass. His choral music is often influenced by historical styles, ranging from Renaissance polyphony to American shape-note singing. His oeuvre also includes three symphonies, a radio opera and chamber works.³²

Biography from ECS Publishing 

Born in Kansas City, MO, Nov 25, 1896 
Died in New York, NY, Sept 30, 1989 

• In addition to composing, Thomson was an influential and accessible music critic. For many years he was the chief music critic at the New York Herald Tribune. 
• Thomson was educated at Harvard and also spent time in Paris in the 1920s, where he met Satie, hobnobbed with Les Six and took composition lessons with Nadia Boulanger. He also met Gertrude Stein, who became a good friend and collaborator (he set her texts multiple times, including collaborating on two operas). 
• Thomson’s mature musical style combines influences from American hymns, 19^th-century dance, and traditional tonality with a dash of diatonic dissonance and polytonality.³²

Composer website from the Virgil Thompson Foundation 

Born in Washington, DC, June 27, 1922 
Died in Montclair, NJ, Aug 23, 2018 

• Walker studied at Oberlin, Eastman, and Curtis. His teachers included Nadia Boulanger, Rudolf Serkin, and Robert Casadesus.³⁸
  • Walker began studying at Oberlin at the age of 14, becoming the institution’s youngest student.
  • Walker was also the first Black student to earn a doctorate at Eastman in 1956.³⁹
• Walker had a distinguished academic career; his longest appointment was at Rutgers University from 1969-92.⁴⁰
  • The stability Walker found in academia paved the way for greater capacity to compose. However, it came at a cost. He had originally pursued a career as a concert pianist but found consistent work too hard to come by due to institutional racism.⁴¹
• Among his many professional honors, George Walker was the first African-American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1996 for his vocal and orchestral piece Lilacs.⁴²
• As a composer, Walker wrote most extensively for string instruments, though his oeuvre also includes concertos for trombone and piano, piano sonatas, sinfonias, brass and wind quintets, song cycles, and more.
• Walker cannot easily be associated with other composers because his music is so distinctive. He wrote each piece to be unique, without any resemblance to a previous work.
  • He also frequently quoted spirituals, Jazz, and folk music in his works, but only with incredible subtlety.⁴³

Learn More

Composer’s website
Obituary article from NPR

Born in Clarksville, TN, Aug 10, 1880 
New York, June 30, 1960 

• White was an African-American composer and violinist. 
• White studied at Oberlin and in Europe, where his teachers included Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. 
• White toured frequently as a violinist, with his wife, collaborative pianist Beatrice Warrick White. 
• White taught at West Virginia State College and was the Director of Music at the the Hampton Institute in Virginia.⁴⁴

Biography from the Library of Congress 

Biography from The African American Registry