![florence price florence price](https://snworksceo.imgix.net/dtc/1997a715-03a5-4515-a26a-d632f4266578.sized-1000x1000.jpg)
This national and international recognition made her more popular back home, and in 1935, the Alumni Association of Philander Smith College in Little Rock sponsored Price’s return to Arkansas, billing her as “noted musician of Chicago” and presenting her in a concert of her own compositions at Dunbar High School. European orchestras later played Price’s works. For example, contralto Marian Anderson featured Price’s spiritual arrangement My Soul’s Been Anchored in de Lord in her famous performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939.
![florence price florence price](https://wpln.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/06/Florence_Price-1024x817.jpg)
Price’s art songs and spiritual arrangements were frequently performed by well-known artists of the day. In this regard, Price shared similar accomplishments with fellow black composers William Grant Still and William Dawson, whose works were performed by leading orchestras in the 1930s and 1940s. This was the first time a black woman had presented her work on such a stage. The latter work premiered with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on June 15, 1933, and the orchestras of Detroit, Michigan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Brooklyn, New York, performed subsequent symphonic works by Price. In 1932, Price won multiple awards in competitions sponsored by the Rodman Wanamaker Foundation for her Piano Sonata in E Minor, a large-scale work in three movements, and her more important work, Symphony in E Minor. Schirmer, a major publishing firm, accepted for publication Price’s At the Cotton Gin. She pursued further musical studies at the American Conservatory of Music and Chicago Musical College and established herself in the Chicago area as a teacher, pianist, and organist.
#FLORENCE PRICE PROFESSIONAL#
There, Price seemed to have more professional opportunity for growth despite the breakdown and eventual dissolution of her marriage. Worsening racial tensions in Arkansas in the 1920s convinced the Prices to move to Chicago, Illinois, in 1927. Despite her credentials, she was denied membership into the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association because of her race. While in Little Rock, Price established a music studio, taught piano lessons, and wrote short pieces for piano. Her husband worked with Scipio Jones, a noted attorney who successfully defended the appeals of twelve black men sentenced to death in the aftermath of the Elaine Massacre of 1919 in Phillips County. The couple had two daughters and one son, who died in infancy. Smith returned to Little Rock in 1912 to marry attorney Thomas Jewell Price on September 25, 1912.
![florence price florence price](https://i0.wp.com/editionbhm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Florence-Price.png)
In that year, however, Smith moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she was head of the music department at Clark University until 1912. She left Cotton Plant after only one year, however, to teach at Shorter College in North Little Rock (Pulaski County), where she remained until 1910. In 1906, she received degrees as an organist and as a piano teacher.Īfter graduation, Smith returned to Arkansas to teach music at the Cotton Plant–Arkadelphia Academy in Cotton Plant (Woodruff County). Smith waited a year and then enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, which was a notable achievement for a black woman at that time. She attended Capitol Hill School in Little Rock, graduating as valedictorian in 1902. Her father was a dentist in Little Rock, while her mother taught piano and worked as a schoolteacher and a businesswoman.Īs a child, Smith received musical instruction from her mother, and she published musical pieces while in high school. The work was later performed at the Chicago World’s Fair as part of the Century of Progress Exhibition.įlorence Smith was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on April 9, 1887, to James H. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her Symphony in E Minor on June 15, 1933, under the direction of Frederick Stock. Florence Beatrice Smith Price was the first African-American female composer to have a symphonic composition performed by a major American symphony orchestra.