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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.

James Lee III

James Lee III
Wikimedia

James Lee III was born in 1975 in St. Joseph, Michigan, and began studying piano at what he considers a late age…12… when his father signed him up for lessons without his knowledge. He earned his Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Michigan, and includes among his composition teachers some prominent American composers: Michael Daugherty, William Bolcom, and Bright Sheng. He also studied composition as a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and as a Fulbright scholar researching music in Brazil.

Dr. Lee is a winner of the Charles Ives Scholarship, the Wladimir Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has quickly become a prolific and highly-in-demand composer creating an average of five new major works every year.

His orchestral pieces have been commissioned and premiered by the National Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the New World Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others. His work has been championed by conductors Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop, Stephane Deneve, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

And most recently (January 28, 2023) his newest work was unveiled by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra… a work with western Illinois connections. His Visions of Cahokia was inspired by a visit to a UNESCO World Heritage site just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Cahokia Mounds, the ancient ruins of an 11th century native American metropolis, is considered one of the most important archaeological finds in North America. Lee said he wanted to “celebrate this Mississippian cultural community at the height of its existence before the mysterious decline and abandonment of the city.”

James Lee III… Classically Black.

Ken oversees all music programming for Tri States Public Radio, hosting the morning classical music program Ovation, the Saturday nigh jazz survey After Hours, and engineering recorded performances for TSPR. Ken is a native of Highland Park, IL, with degrees in music and broadcasting from Western Illinois University. Teenage years listening to Chicago's old-school fine arts and classical radio stations, coupled with a few months spinning discs on a college residence hall radio station, led him onto the primrose career path of radio. Ken has deep roots at TSPR, starting as a student staff announcer and host, before becoming news director for a group of local radio stations, then Program Director for Tri States Audio Information Services. When he's not deep within our studios and music library, he continues his over quarter-century of assisting Macomb High School's Marching Band.