Black Renaissance in Harlem and Chicago

'Ege is an accomplished and absorbing guide.'

BBC Music Magazine

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British pianist and musicologist, Dr Samantha Ege, traces the lives and legacies of a vibrant creative network of Black composers in the transformative Black Renaissances of Harlem and Chicago, including Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, William Grant Still, Nora Holt, and Zenobia Powell Perry.

 

The Black Chicago Renaissance is understood as an offshoot from the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and continuing through to about 1960. But when we look at the classical music roots of Chicago’s cultural rebirth, a different narrative begins to emerge, one that really suggests that this movement began much earlier and that women were a driving force. It was said that you could not think of music in Chicago without thinking about the Bonds family.

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Ege’s programme includes the first public performance of the complete set of all four of Florence Price’s virtuosic Fantasie nègre showpieces, following her discovery and restoration of Price’s Fantasie nègre No. 3 through research in Arkansas. The four fantasies were recorded and released by Ege on Odaline de la Martinez’s LORELT label in March 2021 to glowing reviews.

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Dr Samantha Ege is the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. As a musicologist-pianist, her research and repertoire focus on the era of the Black Renaissance, which was a time of rebirth, uplift and empowerment. Ege belongs to a new generation of practitioners who are redefining classical music and illuminating the diversity of its past, present and future.

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Post-concert Q&A

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Join us after the concert for a Q&A session with Dr Samantha Ege.

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Programme​

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William Grant Still Summerland* 

Florence Price Fantasie nègre No. 4** | Fantasie nègre No. 3** 

Zenobia Powell Perry Homage

Betty Jackson King Four Seasonal Sketches

Nora Holt Negro Dance*

Florence Price Fantasie nègre No. 2** 

Margaret Bonds Spiritual Suite* 

Florence Price Fantasie nègre No. 1 **

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*UK Premiere

**World Premiere

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Artists​

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Samantha Ege piano