Yet Arkansas in the late 19th century was a turbulent place, marked by corrupt elections, martial law, and factional conflict. A portrait of Florence Price as a young woman taken by Kettering and Reynolds Studio in Little Rock, Arkansas Educated professionals like Dr Smith were afforded “certain privileges” and more respect in Little Rock, a city often referred to as a “paradise” for Black people in the South, where they made up more than a third of the city’s population. The family was part of a “small, but powerful Black elite … all the earmarks of gentility,” Brown wrote. Her mother, also called Florence Smith, was a singer and pianist, and her father, Dr James Smith, was a dentist. In 1887, Florence Beatrice Smith was born in Little Rock, Arkansas with music in her blood.

In her own words: “Music, like religion, goes deep.” With music in her blood However, from the pages left behind – an eclectic mix of to-do lists, recorded conversations, and perceptive observations – a picture is painted of a highly intelligent, introspective woman whose love for music went far beyond her own creations. She kept a diary, yet only a few pages remain, as, after her death, sections were given away to friends and family as mementos, leaving only a few pages from the last decade of her life. She “preferred to reveal herself through her music rather than through correspondence and memorabilia,” wrote the late Rae Linda Brown, in her biography of the composer, called, The Heart of a Woman. ‘Music goes deep’Ī notoriously private person, Florence left little behind to give the world a sense of her voice, her opinions, her feelings. The third movement, called Juba Dance, was inspired by a percussive West African style of music that was brought to the US by enslaved people, and African drums were used alongside traditional orchestral writing. Written in 1931 and early 1932, the symphony generally followed the traditional four-movement structure, while also displaying the individuality and influences of its author. The Chicago Daily News, one of the most widely read newspapers in the city, called it “a faultless work, a work that speaks its own message with restraint and yet with passion … worthy of a place in the regular symphonic repertory”. Despite theatres being desegregated in 1897, the Auditorium Theatre in downtown Chicago was in an area dominated by wealthy, white families.įlorence’s Symphony in E Minor played – a soaring, spiritual and spectral piece of art. In 1933, the audience was mostly white, too. But the orchestra would not hire a Black musician to perform as a full-time member until 2002, when Tage Larsen was appointed as fourth trumpet. Helen Kotas would be hired as principal horn in 1941, becoming the first full-time female member. In 1933, the core orchestra was all-male, and entirely white. Her former student and family friend, 20-year-old Margaret Bonds, would perform a concertino for piano and orchestra, becoming the first Black female soloist to play as a guest with the Chicago orchestra.

Although Black, English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor dubbed “the Black Mahler” for his compositional ability, had had his music performed on this scale, never before had a Black woman been in this position.Īnd Florence was not the only “first” in the room. This was the night she would become the first Black woman to have her music performed by an orchestra of this calibre.įounded in 1891, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was already one of the “big five” orchestras in the United States, and frequently ranked among the best in the world.

Among them sat 46-year-old Florence Price, whose Symphony No 1 in E Minor was about to have its orchestral debut.įlorence was on the cusp of making history. The audience shifted and muttered in anticipation. A strange sound filtered from the podium, harmonious and ear piercing in equal measure. It was a summer’s day in June 1933, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was tuning up. – Florence Price, 1943, in a letter to Serge Koussevitsky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra “To begin with I have two handicaps – those of sex and race.”

Florence price