Perchance to dream?

Right now is basically Willy Wonka's crazy LSD trip of a boat ride in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. There's no way of knowing which way we are going, but hopefully, some bright day, we pop out of the hell tunnel and see a world more wondrous than could have been dreamed. Hopefully, too, the Oompa Loompas aren't laboring away behind closed doors to make your wonder world so wonderful. Ay, there's the rub.

But that word: hope. To hope for a better future. Without it, there is no movement forward, no impetus, no drive. Yet how quickly that hope can turn to crushing despair. To fight and flail forward only to find another dead end, or to finally stand close to the dreamed for and see through the cracks of closed doors the Dorian Gray reality. Who wouldn't burn out? Who wouldn't sit, exhausted, head held low, and shuffle forward another day?

And yet, perchance to dream... 

To hope without striving is futile optimism. I hope all students who come to me feel safe to learn their art, and part of that is opening windows on other artists like them. I hope those who want to learn music face no obstacle to their access, so I work with MusicLink to ensure finances, at least, are not a problem. I hope that all who want it have the opportunity to perform, so I strive to find a stage for them. I hope that all who want to write, to compose, will find their voice validated, so I strive to program as diverse a repertoire as is possible.

I hope that any Black student who wants to learn can travel from home to lesson without fear for their life, and so I stand with them until their struggles are (one day!) merely the banal vicissitudes of existing.

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My composer for today is Florence Price (1887-1953). Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, she received her first music lessons from her mother, also named Florence. Ms. Price must've been the type to know what she wanted to do right from go, because she got her first composition published when she was 11 years old. At 14, she graduated high school, and applied and was accepted into the New England Conservatory of Music. Tellingly, she identified as a Mexican to avoid prejudice. There, she wrote her first String Trio and her first Symphony, graduating with honors in 1906.

Her family left for Chicago in 1927, fleeing Jim Crow in the South, and there she met a number of artists who helped facilitate her career as a composer. Among them were Margaret Barnes, Langston Hughes, and Marian Anderson. Another important figure in her career was Frederick Stock, a German conductor who led the premier of Ms. Price's First Symphony with the Chicago Symphony in 1933. This marks the first time a composition written by an African-American woman was performed by a major symphony orchestra.

Musically, Florence Price's compositions are often cut from 19th century romantic cloth, which makes sense given her mother's love for classical music. She also made use of elements from African-American culture, weaving spirituals and dances like the juba into her symphonies. While Ms. Price's reputation lies largely on her orchestra works, she has a good body of songs, some of them arrangements of spirituals, some of them original melodies, which are all excellent. The song below is a setting of Langston Hughes' text "Hold Fast to Dreams," given a jaw dropping interpretation by soprano Louise Toppin. Sorry, accompanist! Your name was not listed for me to credit you!