Carnegie Hall

In an era when American composers learned their craft in Europe, Foote was educated in the US. He studied at the New England Conservatory and eventually earned a Master of Arts in music from Harvard University. He had a voracious musical appetite, admiring R. Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, and (most of all) Beethoven. Later in life, he also explored the innovations of Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, but ultimately rejected them. Foote wrote hundreds of songs, choral works, keyboard music, orchestral pieces, and superb chamber music for a variety of instruments. The soaring melodies and expressive power of his music, rooted in the Romantic tradition, made him one of the first American composers to earn international acclaim.

Beach was a child prodigy, but her strict Calvinist mother forbade her from playing the piano in public. A wise aunt interceded, and seven-year-old Beach performed a recital at her local church. Victim of the prejudices against women composers, she was forced to study on her own rather than take private instruction. After she married, her husband encouraged her to compose, but also bowed to the standards of the day and insisted she teach herself. Her major works, like the “Gaelic” Symphony and Piano Concerto—both premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra—are richly romantic and melodically beautiful.

Price’s mother was her first teacher because white instructors refused to work with African Americans during the days of segregation in the American South. After high school, her mother enrolled her in the New England Conservatory. Price married and later moved to Chicago with her husband in 1927. A participant in the vibrant Chicago Black Renaissance, Price’s music won numerous awards, and was championed by contralto Marian Anderson and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra director Frederick Stock. She frequently combined elements of traditional African music, African American spirituals, and European styles in a wide range of genres.

Kay’s uncle was Joseph “King” Oliver, the legendary jazz cornetist and bandleader. Kay earned a Master of Arts in composition at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with composer Howard Hanson. He enjoyed a brilliant career in academia, teaching at Boston University and UCLA, and was chosen by the US State Department to tour the Soviet Union with other American composers in 1958. The lyricism, harmonic daring, masterful use of counterpoint (composing with two or more simultaneous melodies), and rhythmic vigor of his music is thrilling.