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FIVE YEARS AND THREE ANNOUNCEMENTS
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...
John Michael Cooper
Mar 1710 min read
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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...
John Michael Cooper
Mar 24, 20234 min read
406 views
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A HISTORIC RE-ENACTMENT
Margaret Bonds’s Montomery Variations and Credo on the Same Program with the Hartford Chorale and Hartford Symphony Orchestra Margaret...
John Michael Cooper
Feb 19, 20233 min read
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A COMPOSITIONAL COLLABORATION(?) BETWEEN MARGARET BONDS AND FLORENCE PRICE
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...
John Michael Cooper
Jan 20, 20236 min read
155 views
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MARGARET BONDS: “NO MAN HAS SEEN HIS FACE” (1968)
Fifty-one-year-old Owen Brady was found unconscious and riddled with bullets inside a wrecked and burning car that had crashed into the...
John Michael Cooper
Nov 19, 20224 min read
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ON HARRY T. BURLEIGH, HIS LIFE AND LEGACIES
[This is the fourth in a series of posts of “blogified” short entries from the forthcoming second, enlarged edition of my Historical...
John Michael Cooper
May 28, 20228 min read
428 views
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“UNIVERSITIES, UNIVERSITIES, UNIVERSITIES!” (1)
The Conservatory of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Brings Margaret Bonds’s Civil-Rights Credo to the Home of Dred Scott’s...
John Michael Cooper
May 1, 20224 min read
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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
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THE WORLD PREMIERE OF FLORENCE PRICE’S FIRST CHORAL-ORCHESTRAL COMPOSITION
The Song of Hope sounds at Ithaca College under the baton of Michael Stern [This post is occasioned by the world première of Florence B....
John Michael Cooper
Mar 19, 20223 min read
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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
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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
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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
124 views
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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...
John Michael Cooper
Mar 7, 20213 min read
225 views
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John Michael Cooper
Mar 1710 min read
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John Michael Cooper
Mar 411 min read
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John Michael Cooper
Jan 174 min read
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John Michael Cooper
Nov 2, 20245 min read
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