Following one of Europe’s biggest celebrations of Black music, Kira Thurman considers the continent’s history of supporting Black musicians.
In early September 1945, amid the rubble of a bombed-out Berlin, the Afro-Caribbean conductor Rudolph Dunbar stepped onto a podium and bowed to an enthusiastic audience of German citizens and American military personnel.
The orchestra had gathered in an old movie theatre functioning as a makeshift concert hall in the newly designated American zone of the city. First on the programme was “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Then came a fairly standard set of orchestral pieces, with Carl Maria von Weber’s “Oberon: Overture” followed by Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony. But one piece stood out from the rest: William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony. When it premiered in 1931 in Rochester, New York, it was the first symphony by a Black American to be performed by a major orchestra.
Still’s symphony received a robust round of performances in the United States in the 1930s. That decade was a watershed for Black composers like him, who finally managed to convince powerful American ensembles to perform their music... Keep reading on The Independent.
In early September 1945, amid the rubble of a bombed-out Berlin, the Afro-Caribbean conductor Rudolph Dunbar stepped onto a podium and bowed to an enthusiastic audience of German citizens and American military personnel.
The orchestra had gathered in an old movie theatre functioning as a makeshift concert hall in the newly designated American zone of the city. First on the programme was “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Then came a fairly standard set of orchestral pieces, with Carl Maria von Weber’s “Oberon: Overture” followed by Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony. But one piece stood out from the rest: William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony. When it premiered in 1931 in Rochester, New York, it was the first symphony by a Black American to be performed by a major orchestra.
Still’s symphony received a robust round of performances in the United States in the 1930s. That decade was a watershed for Black composers like him, who finally managed to convince powerful American ensembles to perform their music... Keep reading on The Independent.