Head in the clouds

With no promises to keep, and through a happy series of accidents (thanks to the privilege of time to fish the internet) I discovered this morning a magnificent pianist named Michelle Cann. If you haven’t yet seen her perform, you’re missing some magic in your life. She has specialized, in her academic and performing life, in the works of a composer named Florence Price. Before today, I had never heard of either of them, but this is why I love my life: I was able to spend the whole day furiously reading and listening and learning about them and their circle. (By the time I went out to do errands, it was after 5 and the sky was doing this incredible dance with itself.)

Price lived in Chicago for some years with a former student, a Black woman composer and pianist named Margaret Bonds. Price and Bonds were friends with Langston Hughes, Marian Anderson, and other notable Black artists of their time, but they were living in a virulently racist USA, both composing “classical” or art music with jazzy swishes (think Gershwin) for audiences that allowed them to perform in venues where they were not allowed to use the toilet. The two women performed each other’s music, supported and encouraged each other, and enabled each other to keep composing. In my mind I’m seeing a brilliant film about the two of them and their era, with Viola Davis as Price and Janelle Monae as Bonds.

Price died of a stroke in 1953 when she was 66 and Bonds was only 40, and their work was almost lost to us all. However on May 5, 2023 a new album is coming out, Revival: Music of Price and Bonds, performed by Michelle Cann. If I ran the world, that music would become the score for the film called Revival that now exists in my mind.