Art finds a way.
After an academic career that led her to become her class valedictorian by age 14, she gained admission to the Eastman School of Music, telling people that she was of Mexican origin rather than Black American. She excelled in piano and organ performance, being the only one in her class to hold those as a double major. Composition subsequently became a more profound interest for her, and she pursued it while holding down jobs in Atlanta and, later, Little Rock.
The encouragement she had picked up from one of her professors, American composer George Chadwick, proved to be pivotal, as he was a champion for his female composition students. Ironically for today’s concert program, it was none other than Czech composer Antonín Dvořák who had earlier encouraged Chadwick to use the American folk melodies from the Black experience. He saw those melodies as rich in possibility for American composers. Price took that advice and ran with it, composing many works whose origins varied from African dances to traditional Negro Spirituals in traditional European formats such as symphonies, concertos and concert overtures.
Her Concert Overture No. 1 represents her endeavor to rhapsodize one of those Negro Spirituals in a non-theatrical overture form. It is to say, that the work is used in order for an orchestra to “raise the curtain” on a concert. She chose the spiritual “Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass.” Composed in 1937 and premiered in Chicago in 1939, her background as pianist and organist is evident in her writing style. She launches immediately into the melody replete with congregational amens and treats the theme almost as a set of variations, but it is more accurately described as a free rhapsody which ebbs and flows into a stunning climax. One can only imagine that Dvořák would have been pleased to hear an American composer utilizing music that is unique to our own culture and history.
The rest of the Musings for “Art Finds a Way” are posted in Manny’s Musings on the Bloomington Symphony website. Join us in person on Sunday, November 23, 2025 at 2 p.m. at the Gideon Ives Auditorium at the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center, for this concert that will also feature BSO Principal Oboe Megan Dvorak Werner performing Vaughan Williams’ Concerto for Oboe and Strings and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88