Florence Price: Adoration & Jessie Montgomery: Break Away /Equinox Festival

From Equinox Festival 2024
9 August 2024
Musikhuset København, Copenhagen, Denmark
Gerbrich Meijer, clarinet
Hulda Jónsdóttir, violin
Emily Davis-Robb, violin
Minna Svedberg, viola
Dorothea Wolff, cello
Lùa Mayenco, choreography and dance
Florence Price (1887-1953) was an American composer renowned for her incredibly prolific and diverse body of work, spanning everything from the classical forms of her education to the Black spiritual styles of her childhood. Despite her remarkable output, as a single mother in segregated America, Price faced acute obstacles to getting work published. In a 1943 letter, she wrote “I have two handicaps. Those of sex and race.”
Nevertheless, Price achieved a significant milestone by becoming the first African American woman to have her work performed by a major orchestra, when her Symphony in E Minor was premiered by the Chicago Symphony. Despite protests from the Orchestra’s white management, the press praised the performance for being “faultless [...], a work that speaks its own message with restraint and yet with passion… worthy of a place in the regular symphonic repertoire”. But like most female composers, her works remained largely ignored and might have been lost, were it not for today’s period of activism and rediscovery (and a lucky discovery of a stack of lost papers in a dilapidated Chicago house).
Composed two years before Price’s death, Adoration was originally written for solo organ (a nod to Price’s early career as an organist accompanying silent films). Following the resurgence of interest in her works, Adoration has been adapted into several imaginative arrangements, including this version for clarinet and string quintet.
Jessie Montgomery was born and raised in Manhattan in the socially dynamic 1980s. Her parents were artists who regularly brought her to rallies, performances, and parties, exposing her to the day’s artistic and political movements. Today Montgomery is a teacher and composer whose work weaves classical vocabulary with vernacular music, improvisation, and the social justice ideas of her childhood.
In Break Away, (2013) Montgomery encourages the quartet to occasionally abandon the score and improvise, making each performance a new and unique experience. The first movement, "Lilting," focuses on expressive musical gestures; "Songbird” portrays a solo voice trying to break through a tough exterior; "Smoke” takes inspiration from an original jazz tune; and "Quick Pass" serves as a transition into the final movement, "Break Away," where you will hear the most extensive improvisation of the piece.
The transition between the two pieces symbolises the passing on of tradition and heritage, and the paying forward to future generations.
Equinox is a classical music and dance festival in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Find out more at equinoxfestival.dk