Classically Black

Black classical musicians have been composing substantial music for centuries. This February, we shined the spotlight on a score… one every weekday… of great composers with roots in Africa.We met Le Mozart Noir… the man who not only was a world-famous swordsman, but an acknowledged master of the violin bow and the composing quill, playing duets with Queen Marie Antoinette. We visited a city of Creole musical dynasties, when New Orleans was home to the finest orchestras in the new world. We rediscovered a woman tirelessly composing in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, many of whose works were likewise rediscovered: in a dilapidated downstate summer house, leading to a worldwide wave of interest in her music. And we heard a sinfonietta by a 2oth century New York composer… who himself was named after an Afro-English composer whose interest in American music made him a 19th century fan favorite in the U.S.Looking for the music? TSPR Music Director Ken Zahnle shares all the compositions he featured on Ovation on a Spotify playlist.

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

Tri States Public Radio | By Ken Zahnle

Published February 23, 2023 at 6:00 AM CST

First, there was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Then, there was Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was fated to write music. He was born in 1932 and raised in Manhattan, the child of a mother active in the arts as a piano teacher, church organist, and director of a theater company… who named her son after the great African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Perkinson attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City, the Manhattan School of Music (where he studied composition with Vittorio Giannini), and Princeton. He joined the faculty of Brooklyn College while he continued studying conducting during his summers in Europe… including at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

He would co-found New York’s Symphony of the New World in 1965, becoming its music director… a post he also held with choreographer Jerome Robbins's American Theater Lab, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Perkinson was a remarkably versatile composer: performing jazz piano with drummer Max Roach; arranging pop music for Harry Belafonte and Marvin Gaye; and, of course, he was highly trained in classical: composing sinfoniettas, sonatas, and choral works as well as television scores. For Ailey’s company, he composed the ballet For Bird, With Love, inspired by the music of jazz giant saxophonist Charlie Parker.

Perkinson's music has been described as having a blend of Baroque counterpoint; American Romanticism; elements of the blues, spirituals, and black folk music; and rhythmic ingenuity.

From 1998 Perkinson worked in Chicago with the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College, and served as Coordinator of Performance Activities at the Center for Black Music Research, including directing the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble.

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson… Classically Black.