Where is the music? Presentation by: Jessica Wilkins Owner of JDW Sheet Music www.jdwsheetmusic.com
The Land of Dead White Composers
Education • Students attend music school and study Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and other famous dead white composers. • These students graduate and begin their professional teaching & performance careers dealing with those famous dead white composers. • Those new professional teach their students the same composers and the cycle continues
It’s not hard to find music • Excerpt books, sheet music dealers, free online sources, articles, commercial recordings. • The access to this information is one easy Google search away.
Google search for Mahler
The Land of Forgotten Composers
Education (or lack thereof) • The music of Florence Price, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Ulysses Kay, Marie Grandval, Margaret Sutherland, etc is not studied in school. • When students grow up without this knowledge they don’t teach it to their future students. • The cycle continues.
I can’t find it • This music is not mentioned in excerpt books • Very few commercial recordings (or amateur recordings) • Very few sheet music dealers distribute the pieces
A score but no parts? • Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Song of Hiawatha score is available for free but not the parts • The publisher wants to charge $250 for a set of parts for each movement (total $750) • There are four movements (3 rd one doesn’t seem to be available) • That didn’t happen with Mahler’s music
Where do we go from here?
We need to research • Institute for composer diversity (www.composerdiversity.com) • Works database • Composer database • Bibliography of books about women and composers of color • There is an option to submit composers to the database
Search for oboe works by underrepresented composers
How is JDW Sheet Music helping with the diversity issue?
Creating new editions from old manuscripts
Marie Grandval’s Four pieces EH & Piano
Releasing new works
Ayser Vancin’s Chant for Oboe, Clarinet & Piano
Creating new transcriptions
Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Deep River Arr. Oboe & Piano
Distributing other composers works
List of possible distributed works • Succubus Moon – oboe & string quartet Written by: Eleanor Alberga • Loving touches for oboe & piano Written by: H. Leslie Adams • Sonata for oboe & piano Written by: Brian Raphael Nabors
Black Excellence Series
Other valuable resources • Africlassical • Afrovoices • Music By Black Composers • Sphinx Organization
Conclusion
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