The Deserted Garden for violin and piano; Florence Price (Schirmer)
This is a print-on-demand edition and will have the date of printing on the cover.
Florence Price (1887-1953) was an American composer and an influential figure in Chicago's Black Renaissance. Born and raised in Arkansas, she enrolled at Boston's New England Conservatory at age 15 and showed incredible promise. She eventually moved to Chicago, where she wrote most of her works and became the first African-American woman to be programmed by a major orchestra.
In 2009, a substantial catalogue of her compositions was rescued from an abandoned Illinois house slated for demolition. Since then, her music has rapidly re-entered the wider classical canon. Beautifully romantic and infused with the rich cultural heritage of African-American idioms, her music represents an integral part of America's musical history and, as Alex Ross of the New Yorker asserts, ''deserves to be widely heard.''
Price's The Deserted Garden for violin and piano is one of several short violin works composed in 1933, around the time of her first compositional successes. It is gorgeously lyrical and melodic, a perfect example of her combination of Western classical and African-American vernacular traditions. An approachable piece for intermediate players.
