Performances + Events
In February, a new recording of music by NEC alumna Florence Price won a Grammy Award. The recording, which won in the “Best Classical Solo Vocal Album” category, was coproduced by another NEC alumna, soprano Tamara Acosta ’92 MM, assistant professor of voice at Ithaca College and cofounder of ONEcomposer, an organization that “celebrates musicians whose contributions have been historically excluded,” according to its mission. The album, Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, features soprano Karen Slack and pianist Michelle Cann in performances of songs by Price, who earned two undergraduate diplomas from NEC in 1906 — one in organ and one in piano.
“These are high-art songs,” Acosta said of the music on the recording. “This is very sophisticated repertoire.”
Beyond the Years includes 19 previously unpublished songs, 16 of which are world-premiere recordings. Price wrote the text to one of the songs, “Spring.” She also set a poem by Lord Byron and used texts by several “historically excluded poets.”
“Many of these poets are unknown,” Acosta said, explaining that “Price was a voracious consumer of text and poetry.”
The process of bringing this music to the world began five years ago with a project Acosta undertook with Dr. Stephen Spinelli, head of Choral Studies at Boston Conservatory and cofounder of ONEcomposer. The project involved cataloging Price’s music, a significant collection of which was discovered in 2009. G. Schirmer acquired the Price catalog in 2018.
Acosta and Spinelli founded their organization to support the research, performance, and recording of Price’s music. In 2021, ONEcomposer partnered with the Philadelphia Orchestra to present a performance of and to record for the organization’s Digital Stage Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement using the composer’s original orchestration. Cann, who appears on Beyond the Years, performed the concerto, which was conducted by Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
The manuscript of Florence Price’s song “Beyond the Years,” whose text is a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The impetus to record Price’s music goes beyond celebration.
“There aren’t any interpretations of it yet,” Acosta said. Thus, it’s important to make recordings “with top-level musicianship and artistry, so people can understand the depth of these compositions.”
Beyond the Years is a perfect example of that effort. “Most of these songs have never been heard,” Acosta pointed out.
The album was recorded at Goshen College in Indiana in early September 2023 and coproduced by Alan Bise for Azica Records.
Acosta’s interest in Price’s music was piqued when she began to field questions from students about Black women composers.
“I felt a responsibility to up my game,” she said. “That really motivated the start of this.”
“Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price” was released on Azica Records in 2024
Acosta said she hadn’t really questioned the so-called canon until she started working in higher education.
Acosta began asking herself, of works by historically excluded artists, “Are they lost or are we not looking?” The answer, she realized, was, “We hadn’t been looking.”
The Grammy Award has helped Price’s music reach people. It’s also helped raise the profiles of Black women artists.
“Karen and Michelle are the first-ever Black female duo to win in this category at the Grammys,” Acosta said.
She believes the Grammy nod was the result of “a very focused project: unpublished music by a composer who’s been dead for 75 years,” and the result of the compelling performances by Slack and Cann.
While “the Grammy is certainly helping” to further ONEcomposer’s mission, Acosta said, “There’s so much more to do.”
