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THREE IN D.C.
The Voice of Margaret Bonds Rises in Three Events in the U.S. Capital This Weekend The estimable Margaret Bonds’s (1913-72) musical...

John Michael Cooper
Mar 29, 20224 min read


THE CREDO SOUNDS AGAIN
W.E.B. Du Bois’s bold and brilliant civil-rights manifesto Credo was first published in 1904 and republished with revisions at the head...

John Michael Cooper
Feb 18, 20224 min read


SINCE 1973
On Tuesday, February 15, 2022, at 7:30 p.m. CT, the internationally heralded GRAMMY-winning chorus Conspirare, conducted by...

John Michael Cooper
Feb 12, 20223 min read


MARGARET BONDS’S "TROUBLED WATER" IN HER ARRANGEMENT FOR CELLO AND PIANO
Troubled Water is arguably Margaret Bonds’s best-known instrumental composition. Published by itself by Sam Fox Publishing (New York) in...

John Michael Cooper
Jan 27, 20222 min read


LAMENT AND BENEDICTION
The Last Two Movements of Margaret Bonds’s Montgomery Variations and the 2022 Defeat of Voting Rights Legislation This past week, Senate...

John Michael Cooper
Jan 22, 20224 min read


TWO POSTHUMOUS REVIVALS OF MARGARET BONDS AND LANGSTON HUGHES: AFRICAN DANCE (Danse africaine)
Performances by Greg Watkins and Members of the CAAPA Chorale, November 14, 2021; and Anton Nel and Members of Conspirare, February 15,...

John Michael Cooper
Dec 13, 20212 min read


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...

John Michael Cooper
Dec 10, 20215 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...

John Michael Cooper
Nov 8, 20214 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...

John Michael Cooper
Oct 15, 20212 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...

John Michael Cooper
Sep 20, 20214 min read


“YOU GIVE ME A LIFT”
A Song Lyric by Margaret Bonds Margaret Bonds traveled nearly constantly in her adult life. Even though she maintained a single address...

John Michael Cooper
Aug 5, 20212 min read


LIVING VICARIOUSLY THROUGH POEMS:
MARGARET BONDS, EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, AND LANGSTON HUGHES* * (WITH A CAMEO BY DEBUSSY AND PIERRE LOUŸS) The long, close, and...

John Michael Cooper
Jul 10, 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...

John Michael Cooper
Jun 17, 20213 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 –...

John Michael Cooper
May 29, 20214 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...

John Michael Cooper
Apr 6, 20219 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...

John Michael Cooper
Feb 2, 20212 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...

John Michael Cooper
Jan 24, 20213 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...

John Michael Cooper
Jan 18, 20214 min read


THE SOUND OF PEACE
A Bright Star, a Dove, and Two Christmas Gifts from Margaret Bonds Margaret Bonds (1913-72) was no stranger to humanity’s never-ending...

John Michael Cooper
Dec 25, 20203 min read


“THE LIGHT IS REVEALED”:
A New Reflection on an Unpublished Gospel Song by Margaret Bonds and Langston Hughes “We haven’t any Negro books at all”: this is what...

John Michael Cooper
Dec 12, 20203 min read


John Michael Cooper
Jun 137 min read


John Michael Cooper
Jun 79 min read


John Michael Cooper
May 305 min read


John Michael Cooper
Apr 156 min read

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