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Hazel Scott: Peace of Mind - Lara Downes, piano
Margaret Bonds: What Lips My Lips Have Kissed - Lara Downes, piano & Nicole Cabell, soprano
NORA HOLT: Negro Dance - Lara Downes, piano
Florence Price: Andante con Espressione - Lara Downes, piano & Rachel Barton Pine, violin
The program in MARCH, titled "Phenomenal Women," spotlights the music of Black women composers, including Margaret Bonds. In this case, rather than focusing on Bonds' Harlem connection, Ms. Downes joins BBC Singer of the World soprano Nicole Cabell in What Lips my Lips Have Kissed, one of Bonds' settings of poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay. With violinist Rachel Barton Pine, Ms. Downes performs the newly-discovered Andante con Espressione for violin and piano by Florence Price. Price (1887-1953) was the first Black woman composer to have her music performed by a major orchestra, and because of the efforts of artists including Ms. Downes, who recorded an all-Price solo album last year, the composer's music has enjoyed renewed attention in recent years. Among the solo piano works performed by Ms. Downes on the MARCH recording is Negro Dance by Nora Holt (1884/5-1974), who was not only a pioneering singer, composer, and music critic, but also a wealthy socialite and a magnetic force of the Harlem Renaissance (married five times along the way!) and host of the "Nora Holt Concert Showcase" on Harlem's WLIB radio station. Ms. Downes also performs a new solo arrangement of Peace of Mind by iconic pianist, singer, and actor Hazel Scott (1920-81), who grew up amidst the Harlem Renaissance and rose to nationwide prominence as a jazz artist, becoming the first Black American to host her own television show.
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