#ClassicsaDay #BlackHistoryMonth Week 1 2025
February is Black History Month, and a logical time to highlight contributions by people of color to classical music. Those contributions have been significant -- and not just in the past 50 years.
This month's #ClassicsaDay challenge is to post musical examples of works by composers of color, or classical music recordings made by people of color. There is a lot to choose from.
Here are my social media posts for the first week of #BlackHistoryMonth.
02/03/25 Michael Abels: Global Warming
When Abels wrote this work in 1999, the title referred to the thawing of the Cold War. It's since taken on a new meaning.
02/04/25 Florence Price: Symphony No. 3
The Works Progress Administration commissioned this work in 1938. It was premiered in 1940 by the Michigan WPA Symphony Orchestra.
02/05/25 Eleanor Alberga: Symphony No. 1 "Strata"
British composer Alberga composed this work in 2022. It was inspired by geology. Each movement depicts a different layer of the earth's crust.
02/06/25 Regina Harris Baiocchi: Hold Out for Joy
Baiocchi is an author, poet, and composer. Her work "Hold Out for Joy" was written in 1986 and is based on Psalm 30.
02/07/25 Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Symphony No. 2 in D major
Bologne was a mixed-race composer, born of a French noble and Jamaican enslaved woman. He would become one of France's greatest violinists of the late 1790s, as well as its finest swordsman.
