“Her music should have been played as much as Aaron Copland's music to demonstrate the sound of America as heard through a symphony. ASO is very proud to claim her and it is past time for us to honor her,” CEO Christina Littlejohn says. “Not every city inspired a world-class symphony composer and Little Rock did. Thanks to the Stella Boyle Smith Trust and the Dunbar Historic Neighborhood Association, the ASO performed the world premiere of Price’s own orchestration of her Piano Concerto, and she will be the focus of the symphony's Opus Ball on Nov. Mayton made it his mission to bring Price’s music to the ASO’s stage, and this September, it finally happened. She was able to balance the use of traditional European symphonic structure with the traditional Southern spirituals and folk songs in a perfect way.” “Her orchestrations are lush and enchanting, and while so beautiful, do not seem difficult and complicated like much classical music. “You can feel and hear the deep South,” says Mayton, who also serves on the National Symphony’s board. Mike Mayton, trustee of the Stella Boyle Smith Trust and member of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s music director search committee, was taken with Price’s music too. “With powerful, accomplished women like this to look up to in her childhood, is it any surprise Florence Price seized every opportunity?” Holzer wonders. The daughter of Judge Mifflin Gibbs, the first Black judge elected in the U.S., Marshall became the first Black woman to graduate from Oberlin with a degree in music. Young Price heard concert pianist Harriet Gibbs Marshall’s recital in Little Rock in 1894. She had teachers like Charlotte Andrews Stephens, who attended Oberlin Conservatory, and Carrie Still Shepperson, mother of William Grant Still, a literature teacher and an accomplished pianist who formed and directed a group of spiritual singers.
Holzer says the nurturing Black community in Little Rock at the turn of the 20th century is partially to credit for Price’s inspiration. The music of her Sonata in E Minor grabbed me.” "I came across a recording called ‘Piano Music of Florence Price.’ I was curious, and I ordered the cassette recording for myself. “As an American woman, I thought it would be interesting to focus on an American woman composer," she says. Holzer found Price’s music while researching dissertation topics. "Like her contemporaries William Grant Still, George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, she successfully incorporated elements of Negro folk music into Western art music.” “Price was an American nationalist," says Linda Holzer, music professor at UA Little Rock. And though her music was heard by thousands, she never saw the status or notoriety of her white or male peers. Throughout her life, she wrote, played and promoted her music, with more than 300 pieces to her credit. Marian Anderson, the first Black person to sing with the Metropolitan Opera, closed her historic 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial with Price’s “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.” Price was also known for her spiritual music arrangements. Other pieces of hers were then featured at the Chicago World’s Fair and with the Detroit Symphony.
This grabbed the attention of Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony, and the orchestra premiered the piece, making her the first Black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra. 1 in E Minor won first prize in the Wanamaker Music Competition.
There, she attended classes to perfect her craft, played the organ for silent film screenings and wrote songs for radio ads. Racial tensions caused them to move to Chicago in 1927, and it wasn’t long before she and her husband divorced. In 1912, she returned to Little Rock to marry attorney Thomas Price and raise a family. She graduated with honors in three years with a double-major in organ performance and piano teaching.Īfter school, she came home to teach at Cotton Plant Academy and then Shorter College before moving to Atlanta to become head of the Clark College Music Department. One of only three Black students at the conservatory, Price was counseled by her mother to list her hometown as Pueblo, Mexico, to conceal her race.