In 1955, Columbia Artists Management and Robert Shaw disinvited two Black soloists from the Robert Shaw Chorale's upcoming Southern tour. Margaret Bonds denounced their disinvitation in a press release -- and the soloists were reinvited.

March 17, 2025 Five years ago today, on St. Patrick’s Day in 2020, I set up my website , and the following day (March 18) I posted my...

With roots dating to the mid-1930s, Margaret Bonds's song "Note on Commercial Theater" has finally been published. Here is its story.

Kamala Harris's housing initiative reflects the influence of Rev. Hamilton Boswell, nephew of Margaret Bonds & grandson of Dr. Monroe Majors

Moods for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano at the International Florence Price Festival NO ONE has been more assiduous  about ensuring that the...

The latter-day rediscovery of musical and theatrical polymath Will Dixon offers today's world a much-needed opportunity -- and a challenge

In some ways, the year 2023 was a year of revanchism and regression in classical music. Just a few years earlier, many voices –...

In the last few years, a music-publishing industry that historically has resolutely ignored compositions by composers of color and women...

As a prefatory exercise for this post, consider the “rule of 4%”: less than four percent of the players in professional orchestras with...

In Part 1 of this series of systems-level commentaries on Racism in Romantic Music (RRM), I discussed how the pervasive racism of the...

The Mother of Florence B. Price The tombstone (a marker, really) is in Achor, Columbiana County, Ohio. On it is the name of Florence...

A Conspirare Premiere and a Gratuitous Youthful Photo Langston Hughes’s poem Joy was first published in the collection The Weary Blues...

Margaret Bonds’s Montomery Variations and Credo on the Same Program with the Hartford Chorale and Hartford Symphony Orchestra Margaret...

Sleep Song (text by Joyce Kilmer) Have you ever been in a crowd or out in public and heard a voice that you immediately recognize, even...

Speaking Truth to Power In the late nineteenth century, the railroads were the primary means for shipping goods and materials quickly,...

The Second Violin Concerto in 1953 It’s generally said that Florence Price’s moving and innovative Second Violin Concerto was premiered...

The world premiere of the “revised and extended” version of Margaret Bonds’s The Ballad of the Brown King (December 11, 1960) HISTORY WAS...

Fifty-one-year-old Owen Brady was found unconscious and riddled with bullets inside a wrecked and burning car that had crashed into the...

Four Early Performances of Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite [This note is about Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite – the surviving magnum...

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...