1050 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste. 500
Washington, DC 20035
Our Federal tax ID is 86-2276658.
The Denyce Graves Foundation is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization.
FLORENCE PRICE
Florence’s music combines her training in European classical tradition in which she was trained and the melodious and uniquely haunting sounds of spirituals. Her works are constantly being rediscovered and premiered as recently as 2019, for example, by the Dubois Orchestra and Lyricora Chamber Choir of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
● Works Progress Administration Symphony Orchestra of Detroit, the Chicago Women's Symphony, and the Women's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago
● Inducted into the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (1940)
● Price’s works and a few collections found in her abandoned summer home in 2009.
Making HERstory
Price was part of the Chicago Black Renaissance, an iconic literary and social movement when African-American writers emerged and told about the dehumanizing effects of racial prejudice they faced every day. She studied composition, orchestration, and organ with the leading teachers of the city like Carl Busche and Leo Sowerby to name a few. Even at Fisk University we have the Chicago Black Renaissance to thank for the beautiful music influenced art in our very own Cravath Hall.
UNDINE SMITH MOORE
“Black music is a house of many mansions. Blacks have many music and some of them relate in an extremely universal way to the human condition.”
Undine Smith Moore was not only a composer but an educator first.
She was a changemaker in her beloved home of Virginia and exemplified that in serving her community by doing great work as an educator.
● Served as supervisor of music for Goldsboro, NC Public School System for 45 years until retirement.
● Traveled extensively conducting workshops and lecturing on Black composers.
● Virginia Governor’s Award in the Arts (1985)
● Honorary Doctor of Music from Virginia State University (1972)
● Named music laureate of Virginia.
Moore often credited her family and the unified black communities in Jarratt and Petersburg for molding and nurturing her love of music.
Fisk University Connection
Moore graduated from Fisk University in 1924. In 1973, Dr. Matthew Kennedy, the Director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, asked Moore to compose a piece for the 100th Anniversary of the Fisk Jubilee Singers®. The piece is entitled “Lord We Give Thanks to Thee.” Currently, the Fisk Jubilee Singers performs in concert Moore’s “We Shall Walk Through the Valley in Peace.”
A TEACHER WHO COMPOSES, NOT A COMPOSER WHO TEACHES
