While Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 enjoyed its spotlight at the Chicago World’s Fair, her other Wanamaker Composition Contest-awarded orchestral score, Ethiopia’s Shadow in America, followed a different course. Never performed in her lifetime, it remained hidden for decades. The three-movement work, uncovered in 2009, traces the experience of a person enslaved from Africa. Melancholic and folk-like tunes across solo instruments lead to orchestral writing both majestic and ominous as well as a vibrant dance—a rare example of descriptive music in Price’s catalog, it is finally reaching a wider audience.
Read MoreA Florence Price prizewinning piece finally living in the light
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