John Michael Cooper
A MARGARET BONDS CHRISTMAS -- NORTH AND SOUTH, EAST AND WEST
[This post is about two compositions of Margaret Bonds that are gaining a new foothold on modern musical life. One is a short but...
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John Michael Cooper
Dec 3, 20212 min read
OUR PROMISES TO THE WORLD
A Teacher Bids a Fond Farewell (for now) to His Fine Students and an Adventurous Course [Background: Yesterday was the last regular class...
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John Michael Cooper
Nov 8, 20214 min read
A(NOTHER) MARGARET BONDS PREMIERE:
African Dance, on a Text by Langston Hughes, Gets Its Posthumous Premiere This Weekend On Sunday, November 14, 2021, Greg Watkins and the...
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John Michael Cooper
Oct 15, 20212 min read
THE PROGRAM OF THE MONTGOMERY VARIATIONS
The Minnesota Orchestra Has Recorded an Orchestral Masterpiece by Margaret Bonds [Update 11/13/21: The Minnesota Orchestra's recording is...
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John Michael Cooper
Sep 20, 20214 min read
MARGARET BONDS’S SENIOR RECITAL (1933)
With a Playlist Before 1934, Margaret Bonds publicly programmed only all-White recitals. After 1934 she never did that again. Why the...
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John Michael Cooper
Aug 28, 20214 min read
FLORENCE PRICE V. LANGSTON HUGHES AT THE “FEET O’ JESUS”
Langston Hughes’s relationship with the Christian church was . . . complicated. Except that it wasn’t. While he acknowledged that the...
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John Michael Cooper
Jun 25, 20213 min read
FLORENCE PRICE’S WASHERWOMAN SUITE, ARRANGED FOR STRING QUARTET
YESTERDAY I LEARNED that Elaine Fine, whose arrangement of the now-quite-popular Adoration for violin or viola with piano remains the...
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John Michael Cooper
Jun 17, 20213 min read
A FLORENCE PRICE PREMIERE, MARGARET BONDS, AND A SELF-CORRECTION
This post is a short one, but I hope you’ll find it interesting. In an earlier post I remarked that Florence Price had submitted all four...
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John Michael Cooper
May 29, 20214 min read
MEANWHILE IN L.A.
Gustavo Dudamel to Conduct Margaret Bonds’s Montgomery Variations in July, 2021 This past weekend was filled with plenty of grim news –...
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John Michael Cooper
Apr 24, 20217 min read
THE PROBLEM WITH PROGRAMS (Part 3)
Florence Price’s First Symphony, the 1933-34 World’s Fair, and Three Tribbles (corrected) In Part 1 of this three-part post, I suggested...
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John Michael Cooper
Apr 6, 20219 min read
THE PROBLEM WITH PROGRAMS (Part 2)
Florence Price’s First Symphony, the 1933-34 World’s Fair, and Three Tribbles In the first part of this post I talked about the context...
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John Michael Cooper
Apr 1, 20217 min read
THE PROBLEM WITH PROGRAMS (Part 1)
Florence Price’s First Symphony, the 1933-34 World’s Fair, and Three Tribbles Never in my career of writing did I expect that one day I...
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John Michael Cooper
Mar 7, 20213 min read
THE BEAUTY OF BLACKNESS
Florence B. Price’s “Night” (Text by Bessie Mayle) The poetry, music, and other artworks of the Harlem Renaissance and Chicago Black...
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John Michael Cooper
Feb 24, 20213 min read
THE SPOKEN POETRY OF FLORENCE B. PRICE
A Recitation of Her Unpublished Song of Hope [updated Feb. 28, 2021] Sometime in 1930, Florence B. Price (1887-1953) wrote a poem titled...
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John Michael Cooper
Feb 13, 20214 min read
ANOTHER FLORENCE PRICE PREMIERE
Maeve Brophy and one of the Seven Descriptive Pieces for Piano Solo (1927-28) [Updated 15 February 2021] A month or so ago I published...
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John Michael Cooper
Feb 11, 20215 min read
RACIAL JUSTICE AND AMERICAN PATRIOTISM
Resurrecting a Blacklisted Musical Affirmation of Freedom from 1976 in 2021 [Update (March 8, 2021): The June 13, 2009 revival of...
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John Michael Cooper
Feb 2, 20212 min read
CELEBRATING MARGARET BONDS, COMPOSER AND PIANIST
A Concert and a Premiere Broadcast by Bass-Baritone Timothy Jones, Pianist Howard Watkins, and ROCO Margaret Bonds (1913-72) is...
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John Michael Cooper
Jan 24, 20213 min read
AN “AMERICAN TANGO” BY MARGARET BONDS
MARGARET BONDS (1913-72) WAS A CONCERT PIANIST as well as a composer. By the age of eight she had been taking piano lessons for several...
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John Michael Cooper
Jan 18, 20214 min read
“YES, IT’LL BE ME!”
Margaret Bonds, Langston Hughes, and the Note on Commercial Theater In the chapter titled “When the Negro Was in Vogue” of his 1940...
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John Michael Cooper
Jan 13, 20216 min read
COMPOSING FREEDOM:
On Performers’ and Listeners’ Rediscovery of Florence Price’s Clouds (ca. 1947) LIKE ABOUT THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY of the more than three...
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