The Women of Chicago’s Black Renaissance

A "pianist of sterling artistry" (Gramophone) capable of "transmitting in every note a surprising calm and beauty" (Ear Relevant), Grammy Award-winner Michelle Cann makes her PPI debut with a program exploring Chicago's Black Renaissance, a prolific period of artistic experimentation and community building that blossomed in the city's South Side during the Great Migration.

Focusing on six of the movement's women composers, Cann explores how each of these artists merged the romanticism of Brahms, Liszt, and the Schumanns with elements of Black musical idioms — including jazz, urban blues, gospel, and spirituals — to forge compelling musical worlds steeped in European tradition but quintessentially American in character.

NORA DOUGLAS HOLT KING Negro Dance, op. 25, no. 1  (from The Southern Suite for Piano)

BETTY JACKSON KING Four Seasonal Sketches 

I. Spring Intermezzo
II. Summer Interlude
III. Autumn Dance
IV. Winter Holiday

FLORENCE PRICE Fantasie nègre Nos. 2, 4, 1 

— Intermission —

IRENE BRITTON SMITH Variations on a Theme by MacDowell 

MARGARET BONDS Spiritual Suite

Valley of the bones, based on the spiritual “Dry bones.”
The bells, based on “Peter, go ring dem bells.”
Troubled water, based on the spiritual “Wade in the water.”

HAZEL SCOTT
Improvisation on Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor
Improvisation on Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

Michelle Cann appears by arrangement with the Curtis Institute of Music.