John Michael Cooper
AN AUSPICOUS ANNIVERSARY:
The story of the life, work, and legacy of Will H. Dixon may be the first major musical rediscovery of the 21st century.
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John Michael Cooper
- Feb 28
- 9 min
BLACK REINSCRIPTION, WHITE REPRISAL: ELIZABETH KECKLEY AND MARGARET BONDS
(Prefatory note: I began this first of the twelve Black History months of 2024-25 down with simultaneous COVID and flu – and the lost...
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John Michael Cooper
- Feb 16
- 7 min
SEQUINA DUBOSE: FROM “BLURRED LINES,” A MESSAGE CRYSTAL CLEAR (pt. 1 of 2)
In some ways, the year 2023 was a year of revanchism and regression in classical music. Just a few years earlier, many voices –...
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John Michael Cooper
- Nov 11, 2023
- 5 min
Margaret Bonds and The Ballad of the Brown King
Some Historical Errata, Corrigenda, and Addenda As December nears, so do more performances of one of Margaret Bonds’s most important and...
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John Michael Cooper
- Oct 5, 2023
- 2 min
The Tombstone’s Tale (2)
This post is an update to my post of March 26, 2023. As I noted there, in 1912, two years after the death of Dr. James H. Smith, father...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 26, 2023
- 5 min
RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (4): CANONICAL SILENCING, AND SOME CONCLUSIONS
As a prefatory exercise for this post, consider the “rule of 4%”: less than four percent of the players in professional orchestras with...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 25, 2023
- 3 min
RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (3): ARCHIVAL SILENCING
In Parts 1 and 2 of this four-part post I attempted a systems-level analysis of the means and mechanisms (“linchpins”) by which racism...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 24, 2023
- 3 min
RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (2): SILENCING BY MUSIC PUBLISHERS
In Part 1 of this series of systems-level commentaries on Racism in Romantic Music (RRM), I discussed how the pervasive racism of the...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 23, 2023
- 7 min
RRM – RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (Part 1 of 4)
Dear Constant Reader, I’ve been absent from this blog for a while, partly because I needed to recharge, partly because I’m currently...
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John Michael Cooper
- Mar 26, 2023
- 4 min
THE TOMBSTONE’S TALE
The Mother of Florence B. Price The tombstone (a marker, really) is in Achor, Columbiana County, Ohio. On it is the name of Florence...
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John Michael Cooper
- Mar 24, 2023
- 4 min
MARGARET BONDS, LANGSTON HUGHES, AND THE JOY OF “JOY”:
A Conspirare Premiere and a Gratuitous Youthful Photo Langston Hughes’s poem Joy was first published in the collection The Weary Blues...
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John Michael Cooper
- Feb 22, 2023
- 5 min
A FATHER-DAUGHTER GIFT FOR TODAY
The Margaret Bonds / W.E.B. Du Bois Credo Returns to Its Roots Margaret Bonds’s relationship with her father was complicated but rich –...
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John Michael Cooper
- Feb 19, 2023
- 3 min
A HISTORIC RE-ENACTMENT
Margaret Bonds’s Montomery Variations and Credo on the Same Program with the Hartford Chorale and Hartford Symphony Orchestra Margaret...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jan 7, 2023
- 6 min
JOLLY JINKS WITH FLORENCE PRICE
Twenty Years Down the Road, a Great Composer Revisits an Early Work and Asks, “What’s in a Name?” There aren’t many students of...
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John Michael Cooper
- Dec 20, 2022
- 3 min
FLORENCE PRICE’S MOTHER AND FATHER SUED THE RAILROAD FOR DISCRIMINATION
Speaking Truth to Power In the late nineteenth century, the railroads were the primary means for shipping goods and materials quickly,...
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John Michael Cooper
- Dec 12, 2022
- 2 min
A MEMORIAL PERFORMANCE FOR FLORENCE B. PRICE
The Second Violin Concerto in 1953 It’s generally said that Florence Price’s moving and innovative Second Violin Concerto was premiered...
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John Michael Cooper
- Dec 11, 2022
- 2 min
A MOST AUSPICIOUS OCCASION
The world premiere of the “revised and extended” version of Margaret Bonds’s The Ballad of the Brown King (December 11, 1960) HISTORY WAS...
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John Michael Cooper
- Nov 11, 2022
- 4 min
COALESCENCE, CULMINATION, AND EMANCIPATION:
Four Early Performances of Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite [This note is about Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite – the surviving magnum...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jul 1, 2022
- 3 min
“I DEDICATED IT TO MOTHER”
On the Origins of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand by Margaret Bonds Margaret Bonds is justly celebrated for her inspired and...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 20, 2022
- 6 min
ON THE VERY FAMILIAR, AND VERY MYSTERIOUS, SCOTT JOPLIN
[This is the sixth in a series of posts of “blogified” short entries from the forthcoming second, enlarged edition of my Historical...
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