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''If there s a popular favorite in the Price catalog, the Symphony No. 1 is surfacing as a front-runner. January will bring a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra and a new recording on Naxos by the Fort Smith Symphony, in Arkansas. Listening to an advance copy, I was struck by the many captivating details in the performance, conducted by John Jeter: brooding melodies evocative of black spirituals, mystical brass chorales accompanied by a soft drumbeat, and another juba, complete with a zany slide whistle. The piece is paired with Price s Fourth Symphony, which also features a juba and an apparent homage to Duke Ellington s ''jungle style.'' '' --Wall Street JournalAlbum of the week The Naxos label originally put itself on the map for solid recordings featuring respectable renditions of standard repertoire and offbeat fare, offered at rock-bottom prices. But in 2000 the label discovered a useful and little-served niche that quickly provided new respectability: the American Classics line, which made its initial splash with discs covering a range from John Philip Sousa to John Cage. Music by mid-20th-century symphonists like Samuel Barber and Walter Piston was especially well served by the new series. Now, almost 20 years later comes what might be the most noteworthy offering the American Classics series has produced to date: the world premiere recording of the Symphony No. 4 in D minor by Florence Price, a pioneering composer who recently has been the subject of numerous high-profile articles. Scholars warn us not to call this a rediscovery, since Price's achievement and reputation never disappeared altogether. Still, it was big news when a trove of nearly lost scores and papers that had belonged to the first woman of color to have a piece played by a major orchestral institution the Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuted Price's Symphony No. 1 in E minor in 1933 turned up in 2009 in an abandoned Illinois house where Price once had spent her summers. This new CD, appropriately recorded by the oldest orchestral ensemble in Arkansas, the state where Price was born, is sure to spark even more widespread interest in this resurgent American composer. The performances are solid and stylish, as is the recording by producer Tim Handley. The concise yet detailed and informative liner notes are by Douglas Shadle, the Vanderbilt University musicologist who single handedly has done more than anyone to stamp out fake news about Price and her milieu on social media. No question, Price's music is of its time: redolent of Brahms and Dvo k, William Grant Still and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, even Duke Ellington. But there's a freshness and commitment in these performances that wins you over right away. If you've already got Leslie Dunner's groundbreaking Albany recording of Price's First Symphony, you won't want to toss it out; Dunner gives the music's playful rhythms more swing and lilt and besides, you wouldn't want to lose the pairing on that disc: composer Trevor Weston's remarkable reconstruction of Price's Piano Concerto in One Movement. Still, the Fort Smith ensemble plays more smoothly and securely, and you'll certainly want to hear the comparatively little known Fourth Symphony. Happily, at the Naxos list price, it's not hard to say yes. --Steve Smith / National Sawdust Log - On the RecordThe recent surge of interest in the music of Florence Price (Michael Morgan leads the Oakland Symphony in her Symphony No. 3 on Friday, Jan. 25) is a heartening and important development on several fronts. Most obviously, it rescues from invisibility a key pioneer in the history of African-American music Price, who died in 1953, wrote symphonies, concertos, vocal works and chamber music, in the face of a host of societal obstacles. The Fort Smith Symphony, in Price's native Arkansas, has launched a series of recordings devoted to her music, and the two symphonies here show a canny and often resourceful fusion of European form with American melodic strains. In the First Symphony, from 1932, that combination sounds mostly like a skillful pastiche of Dvork's ''New World'' Symphony. But the Fourth Symphony, from 1945 recorded here for the first time based on a recently discovered score takes that style in surprising and fascinating directions, with chromatic filigree and rhythmic dislocations that bring the music vividly to life. --Joshua Kosman / Datebook / San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Music promoter and entrepreneur, freelance writer and author, former newspaperman and current dilettante, I write to entertain. I've published three books: ROCKIN' A HARD PLACE (Hub City Books) , about my 20 years owning and buying talent for The Handlebar, a small concert venue in Greenville, S.C.; THE PLUNDER ROOM (St. Martin's Press) , about honor, which is why it's fiction; and THE LUCIFER GENOME (Brigid's Fire Press) , with Glen Craney, a religious conspiracy thriller.
A sitcom based on ROCKIN' A HARD PLACE is in development, as is a play, THE LYNCHING, based on a celebrated murder trial in Greenville.
I've worked as a reporter, editor and rewriteman at the Chicago Sun-Times, San Antonio Express-News and St. Petersburg Times, and I have a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. I've appeared on Oprah!.
And I'm alive today, thanks to my brother's kidney, given to me in a transplant in 1984.