Not Forgotten Anymore: The African American Composer Initiative

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Not Forgotten Anymore: The African American Composer Initiative
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Sometimes all it takes to change lives is a simple question. One day at her piano lesson, LaDoris Cordell asked her teacher, Jodi Gandolfi, if there were any Black composers of concert music. Concert music is a more inclusive term for what many people know as “classical” music: art songs, symphonies, opera, chamber music. The canon of concert music is overwhelmingly white, or rather, it was.

LaDoris’s question sparked curiosity in Jodi, whose investigations revealed a positive avalanche of materials, so they brought in Deanne Tucker to help out. Over 20 years after that simple question, the African American Composer Initiative is a concert series, it’s an archive, it’s a community, and it’s a passion that has changed the lives of its founders. [Click for transcript]

Related:

“ We are on a big mission here, and that is to bring the music of these composers, so many of whom have been forgotten—not forgotten anymore, not forgotten.” LaDoris Cordell

In this episode:

Jodi Gandolfi , a native of Boston, has resided in the California Bay Area since 1978 Her training as a pianist began in early childhood, followed by study at Cornell University, University of Wisconsin Madison, the State Conservatory (Hochschule) of Cologne, Germany, and Stanford University. Her interests as a performer have been wide-ranging including classical solo piano, chamber music, and song and choral accompaniment, new American music, particularly California composers, music by women composers, and in recent years music by African American composers, living and historic. In Santa Cruz, CA she performed as keyboardist with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra during Marin Alsop’s tenure and, Ensemble Parallel under Nicole Paiement, and with Picasso Ensemble, founded by Susan C. Brown. She has taught piano at Stanford University and at University of California-Santa Cruz, and served as vocal accompanist at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and accompanist for Peninsula Women’s Chorus under Patricia Hennings, Karen Linford, and Martin Benvenuto. She maintains a private teaching studio in Menlo Park, CA. She has recorded for CRI, Koch International, Helicon, New Albion, and Cambria.

A 1971 graduate of Antioch College and a 1974 graduate of Stanford Law School, LaDoris Hazzard Cordell was the first lawyer to open a private law practice in East Palo Alto. In 1978, she was appointed Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at Stanford Law School, where she implemented a successful minority admissions program. In 1982, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Ms. Cordell to the Municipal Court of Santa Clara County, making her the first African American woman judge in northern California. In 1988, Judge Cordell won election to the Superior Court of Santa Clara County.  After 19 years on the bench, she retired and began employment at Stanford University as Vice Provost & Special Counselor to the President for Campus Relations until 2009. Judge Cordell was the Independent Police Auditor for the City of San Jose for five years (2010-2015), having been appointed to that position after a national search. Under her leadership, that office gained national prominence. She is a founding member of the African American Composer Initiative.

Deanne Tucker has been studying piano with Jodi Gandolfi for almost 25 years. With a background in science and technology, she helps the AACI with the technical side of running the organization.

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Not forgotten anymore: African American Composers Initiative

Not forgotten anymore: African American Composers Initiative PODCAST VERSION

[00:00:00]

Segment 1: How the AACI came to be

[00:00:37] LaDoris Cordell: At a time like this when, uh, to even say the initials, DEI can get people in trouble, uh, we are standing up to that and saying, this is about equity and inclusion and diversity and music, particularly the music world should always be about this.

[00:01:01] Voiceover Suki: This is your host, Suki Wessling. Today’s episode is about a discovery, and not just one discovery, but a whole movement that arose from a single question. Three women joined together and not only answered the question, but built on it. In a time when a lot of the news is about the dismantling of American culture, these three women have been discovering, developing, and building anew. Let’s meet them.

[00:01:31] Jodi Gandolfi: I am Jodi Gandolfi. I’m a pianist and teacher, and I’ve been an active musician in California since 1978.

[00:01:39] LaDoris Cordell: I’m LaDoris Hazzard Cordell. I am a music lover. I play the piano. Jodi Gandolfi was my piano teacher, has been. And I am a retired superior court judge here in California.

[00:01:53] Deanne Tucker: I am Deanne Tucker. I’m one of Jodi Gandalf’s piano students and have been for a long time, and I’m also active in choirs in the Bay Area.

The African American Composer Initiative today

[00:02:03] Voiceover Suki: The project led by Jodi, LaDoris, and Deanne is called the African American Composer Initiative. Founded in 2010, the group started with a simple goal of finding and performing little known compositions by Black American composers in the sphere of what we’ll refer to as concert music.

[00:02:20] This term is a more accurate description of what is often awkwardly named classical music, musical compositions comprising art songs, ensemble repertoire, opera and symphony, whether written far in the past or by a living composer.

[00:03:22] This hour you’ll hear selections from a lot of music. You can find all the recordings and more at aacinitiative.org.

[00:03:30] You’ve been listening to a setting of Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen by William Grant Still. Before the AACI started its work, Still was possibly the only African American composer that some musicians could name. Though there were and are many, Still was the first composer that the AACI programmed for its inaugural concert. Here’s Jodi.

[00:03:50] Jodi Gandolfi: We began, presenting music, uh, from the concert classical idiom. Music by William Grant Still is the first composer that we presented. And we continued to explore, uh, the repertoire of music, instrumental vocal music by African American composers, men and women. So by the time we presented our first concert dedicated entirely to African American composers, it was 10 composers, men and women. And most of the music was from the classical idiom: art songs, chamber music, piano, solo music. And there was a little representation of jazz as well with the music by, uh, Valerie Capers, who had, published a set of piano pieces called Portraits in Jazz.

It started with a question

[00:04:37] Voiceover Suki: Entering their 17th year, the scope of their concerts has expanded, as you’ll hear. But how did this happen in the first place? It started with a question that had no answer. Here’s

[00:04:49] LaDoris Cordell: I had been taking piano lessons from Jodi, and let me just go back a little bit. Um, when I grew up, uh, back on the East Coast, I have two sisters, we took piano lessons and, um, I am African American and, uh, our piano teacher at the time was African American. And I started taking piano lessons, maybe when I was six years old, and my sisters as well. And then by the time I get to college, it’s like I’m done with piano lessons and piano. It was a part of my life, but not, not a major part.

[00:05:23] So fast forward years later, maybe 36 years later, I had come out to California. I had finished law school at Stanford, and at the point, uh, at the time I met Jodi, I had been on the bench, I had gone on from practicing law and then became a judge, and then retired. I ended up taking lessons from, from Jodi and basically going back to music. And, um, it was great because growing up I didn’t really like to practice that much. And, uh, once I started taking lessons, I just couldn’t wait to practice. And it’s still the case with me now. Just a real love for playing the piano.

[00:06:02] I maybe started lessons in 2004 or something like that. And so it may have been three or four years in, Jodi had me playing, you know, all the, the great masters of piano, you know, Mozart and Beethoven and Bach. And, and so at one point I’m at the lesson and I, I looked at her and I said, ‘aren’t there any Black composers?’ And Jodi looked at me and like, Hmm. And well, you know, we really didn’t know any Black composers.

[00:06:34] And so that’s really what started this journey because that one question started Jodi looking. And what I found just so interesting but not shocking is that Jodi, my piano teacher, I mean there’s, in my view, there’s no pianist better anywhere, um, had the best music education one could possibly get, and she can tell you about what that entailed. And yet, during her entire course of studying piano and at universities and she’s, um, Fulbright scholar, all of that, never once, never once, uh, came across or was presented with the music of African American composers. Uh, and that’s really a sad statement, I believe, about the institution of music, meaning that so many groups in particular this time, African Americans have been excluded, uh, from recognition.

[00:07:28] So that’s where the journey began, and Jodi went on this journey and has found this music. So, um, just to fast forward, when we get to our next concert in January, uh, we will have performed the music of more than 40 African American composers. And when we started this journey, I will tell you, African American person here, I did not know any of these composers. Uh, so it’s been an, an interesting journey and fortunately for the last 10 years, we’ve been able to bring, more than 10 years, we’ve been able to bring the audience with us on this journey.

Left out of the classical repertoire

[00:08:03] Suki Wessling: It’s so fascinating and so interesting and probably surprising to a lot of people because African American music has been part of the fabric of American culture, all American culture for, you know, well over a hundred years when you start with the earliest Black performers and, and get into the jazz era and then get into the swing era, the rock and roll era. It’s, amazing that this group of composers was completely left out of the picture.

[00:08:38] LaDoris Cordell: But see Suki, but part of this is that when we mention African American composers to people who’ve not been to our concert, for example, they immediately think, okay, it’s either jazz or gospel. That’s it. And not knowing, we’re talking art songs, we’re talking opera, classical music, uh, popular music, all of it.

[00:08:56] And the influence by African American composers has been phenomenal. Throughout history until up until today, including with hip hop, all of this stuff. So I didn’t know all this either. Uh, so it’s really been a, a real discovery, I think, for all of us, including the musicians who perform with us.

[00:09:15] Suki Wessling: When you’ve looked at the histories of the earlier composers, composers in the classical idiom, like William Grant Still, what do you see in their life experiences that led their music not to make it into the canon? What happened to them, in some cases, from what I read, they did actually, say, go to Julliard or lead orchestras. Where did the disconnect happen?

[00:09:46] Jodi Gandolfi: As you mentioned, when you look at the biographies of, uh, all the composers of, you know, so-called classical music or concert music, I would call it, that we perform, they had phenomenal educations. They went to, uh, new England Conservatory. They went to Julliard. They went to Eastman, they went to Oberlin. They had fantastic educations at the uh, historically black colleges, you know, at Fisk. They worked with master composers, and they, uh, became very accomplished, you know, as composers of orchestral music, of opera, of choral music, of instrumental music. In their lifetimes, some of their music was performed and some of it was published.

[00:10:30] But generally speaking, after their lifetimes and even near the ends of their lifetimes, their music was no longer performed. And this is in spite of getting like wonderful audience, uh, reaction to the music, often the critics pan the music. There was a tremendous prejudice against, the publication and the performance of music by African Americans. I believe it was tremendously racist. Composers like William Grant still were very despondent, uh, near the ends of their lives because they, you know, had, uh, produced tremendous music and they were great spokespeople for, for equality and, uh, you know, just tremendously accomplished and dedicated.

[00:11:14] And they spoke out about problems of racism. Certainly, everyone I’ve read about did comment on these problems, but the musical establishment, uh, was, just not, uh, supportive of them. And so, if they didn’t have an advocate, their music was often lost, or it was unpublished for decades.

[00:11:37] If it was around in a library archive at all, it was collecting dust. And so it later, you know, took the work of, uh, researchers who were interested in this music to, uh, bring it out, to publish it, to archive it. But there still wasn’t a, you know, a general knowledge of this music, uh, among musicians, certainly, uh, in music schools and conservatories, it was absent.

[00:12:00] And one wonders, you know, what, what happened? My own feeling is there was, uh, probably a very kind of subliminal racism that went on among music critics who were just expecting to hear, you know, European music, that if there was even a suggestion of something from the African American canon of music, it was, uh, it was rejected.

[00:12:24] Voiceover Suki: You’ve been listening to African American Composer Initiative co-founder, Jodi Gandolfi. Her colleague LaDoris Cordell sings Hold Out for Joy by Regina Baiocchi, and then speaks further about underperformed Black composers.

[00:12:37]

[00:13:39] LaDoris Cordell: The sadness in all of this is that if you’re a composer, you want your music to be heard. That’s why you’re doing it because you want it to impact people. And when you have composed beautiful music and it is blocked because of racism, and it’s just exactly what it was, then you can imagine how despondent these composers must have been when they’ve got all this music and it’s really not out there to be heard. And that’s the sad part.

[00:14:11] So the good part however, is that, uh, with the AACI, with what we’re doing, we are remedying that. We are saying, this music is going to be heard. And not only just in front of our audiences, but we have the website. Anyone can go in, and not just hear the music and watch the concerts, but find the music. You can actually track it down if you want to play some of the music. So, we, we are on a big mission here, and that is to bring the music of these composers, so many of whom have been forgotten, not forgotten anymore, not forgotten. We are clearly on that mission and, and I believe we’re accomplishing it.

Composers need advocates

[00:14:50] Suki Wessling: Yeah. You know, Jodi, I think you used the word advocate, and I’m thinking because my background is, I’m also a musician, but mostly in literature that when I was in college in the eighties, there was this big push to open up the literary canon to women and people of color, and that there were a lot of people advocating for that.

[00:15:13] And it seems like the same thing didn’t happen– maybe to a certain extent it happened with women, but it was much later with concert music. Do you think that concert music is, is just perhaps more conservative or was there a lack of advocates? Was your group’s advocacy for these composers really, so much more successful because there, it just hadn’t happened yet?

[00:15:40] Jodi Gandolfi: You know, as LaDoris mentioned at that piano lesson when I drew a blank, are there any African American composers? The first thing I did was look at the music of William Grant Still. By chance someone had sent me a volume of his piano music, a friend of mine who had recently also, you know, kinda discovered his music. And, when I got that music, I realized, oh my goodness, he was very prolific and this is terrific music. So I contacted his daughter, who has kept his music alive through her wonderful publishing company. We’ve had a wonderful correspondence ever since. We write to each other regularly. I have a wonderful library now of music of William Grant Still.

[00:16:15] But that was my first step and then I looked around a little bit more and I found that, yeah, there were a few other publications that had been put out by some wonderful advocates of African American music, but somehow it hadn’t gotten picked up by teachers or performers, players. And I’m thinking of, uh, publishing companies like Hildegard Music. They had published a wonderful, several wonderful collections, one of music by African American women, piano music, chamber music by African American women. They were a women’s publishing company. and then I found, uh, collections of art songs. Willis Patterson did one of the first published collections, anthologies, and it is brilliant.

[00:16:57] In fact, much of the music from our concerts has come from his collection. I soon came, uh, into contact with writings by a woman named Helen Walker Hill. And I read that she had amassed a huge collection of music by particularly African American women, and it was housed in Chicago at the Center for Black Music Research, most of it in manuscript.

[00:17:20] So, she was a great advocate and she wrote a book that everyone who’s interested in this music should read. It’s, it’s called, from Spirituals to Symphonies. And it’s a history, it’s actually a long history of life in America for African Americans and their music. And then interviews with African American women who were alive at the time she was writing the book, fantastic interviews. She went on then to, uh, record some of this music.

[00:17:46] But I became very interested in what, what’s in that archive. So I did contact the Center for Black Music Research, and that’s where we made a lot of our connections. I made trips to Chicago and spent days in that library and found out that, for example, Regina Baiocchi was right there in Chicago, prolific composer, uh, Dolores White, manuscripts by Zenobia Powell Perry, and I read that her, the executor of her music was in, in California. And I contacted her. She sent me CDs of all of her music, I mean, hundreds of pieces in every genre. And, and she published a, a, a biography of Zenobia Powell Perry, and she produced her opera, which had never been produced in the composer’s lifetime. I mean, she’s a real powerhouse and we, we have a very good working relationship with her.

Development of projects

[00:18:36] Jodi Gandolfi: But it was through her then that we, you know, got this music by Zenobia Powell Perry, and then, you know, one thing leads to another. She has been a great advocate for that particular composer. Uh, and then she invited us to make recordings. We recorded all of her piano music or almost all of it. And then she, uh, said, let’s make more recordings. So we recorded three more CDs of music by African American composers with her. But it takes that kind of advocacy and, uh, what- ambition and, dedication. It’s more dedication than ambition, to see that these projects are brought to fruition, you know, in performance and in recording, which, you know, then it’s, it’s there forever for others to hear.

[00:19:19] Voiceover Suki: Zenobia Powell Perry, who died in 2004 at age 95, wrote extensive works in all of the concert music genres, from opera to solo piano. You can hear much more of all the music we’re speaking about at the AACI website aac initiative.org.

[00:19:37] When we return, we’ll delve deeper into the experience of bringing this music back to public awareness. First, here’s a selection of Zenobia Powell Perry’s Teeta.

[00:19:46] Jodi Gandolfi:

Segment 2: Making connections

[00:21:05] Voiceover Suki: This is your host, Suki Wessling. We are speaking with the three women who created the African American Composer Initiative, Jodi Gandolfi, LaDoris Cordell and Deanne Tucker. You’ve been listening to Spring Intermezzo from Four Seasonal Sketches by Betty Jackson King, who lived from 1928 to 1944. King is one of the composers whose musical ventures were nurtured in Chicago. Here, Jodi speaks of that connection and the music they created.

[00:21:32]

The Chicago Connection

[00:21:34] Jodi Gandolfi: The Chicago connection is an interesting one. Two of the composers who have gotten a lot of play in the recent years are Margaret Bonds and Florence Price. They both spent considerable time in Chicago. In fact, Margaret Bond’s mother took Florence Price into their home and helped to support her at a time when she was having difficulties in her life, so they had a very close bond, and then they continued their, uh, musical bond, Margaret Bonds, performing the concerto of Price with the Chicago Symphony, for example.

[00:22:04] But because I went to the Center for Black Music Research, I got connected with many of the women composers of Chicago, and those included, Dolores White who recently passed away, Regina, Harris Ba iocchi, who has become one of our regulars in our programming. She’s a very accomplished composer, uh, who works in many styles, and she has a very strong social conscience. The pieces of hers that we’ve done have been, you know, very relevant in, you know, in many ways to, to our times.

[00:22:36] Regina talks about how she feels she does stand on the shoulders of the women of Chicago. And there are others. There’s Lena McLin, who’s another great figure in Chicago, a brilliant composer and musician, and a great contributor to the community. She and her husband had a, a Black opera company, in fact, and Betty Jackson King, whom we programmed many times, another brilliant musician of, uh, piano and choral music.

[00:23:02] So when you read about music in Chicago at the time, it was, it was a little bit like the New York Harlem Renaissance there because, uh, during the Great Migration, many uh, people fled the south and went to Chicago, and some of these were among these, these women that, I was just talking about.

[00:23:18] So, we’ve been very fortunate to, you know, play the music of, actually, of all of the composers I just mentioned, and to kind of acknowledge the interconnectedness of these people and the, the appreciation that they’ve had for one another and their impact on one another, if not directly, then, you know, because of the kinds of contributions that they made that they, that they were aware of later.

We are family

[00:23:40] LaDoris Cordell: One of the themes from, was it the Last Concert We Are Family, was indeed based upon that notion that these composers, they weren’t competitive with each other. They appreciated one another and then helped each other, um, to create an environment where they could be creative and make the music. which is very, very important because we live at a time in almost every field there’s, it’s competition. It’s competition, even in music, competition. But that’s not what we found when we looked at the family of African American composers coming up where they had very little, but they’re willing to share and support one another.

[00:24:22] Jodi Gandolfi: This has been a wonderful part of the experience for me. I’ve gotten to know so many of the children of these composers that are no longer with us. Judith Ann Still is one, the daughter of William Grant still, uh, Dolores White’s daughter, who’s a fantastic, uh, pianist herself, the daughter of Zenobia Powell Perry, whom we all got to work with when we, you know, produced her mother’s opera, a concert version of the opera.

[00:24:45] The son, the wonderful son of George Walker. Actually, he’s the son of George Walker and the musicologist I talked about, Helen Walker Hill. He’s a fantastic composer himself. And, I got to meet him at the conference I mentioned, and he uh told me how grateful he was that people were performing music of the composers his mother wrote about and did all that hard work for.

[00:25:08] And also the, the daughter of Undine Smith Moore, another, you know, one of our brilliant African American composers no longer with us, she’s a modern dancer, and she gave, we communicated and she gave permission to make a slight, uh, change in one of her mother’s pieces so we could perform it.

Willingness to cross genre lines

[00:25:23] Jodi Gandolfi:

[00:25:37] Voiceover Suki: One of the striking things when you listen to the breadth of the composers that the African American Composer Initiative has featured is the blurring of genre lines. Although classical composers throughout time have written themes based on folk music, many Black composers use, as Jodi explains, musical vocabulary drawn from their community’s, musical traditions, such as in this piece, the Valley of the Bones by Margaret Bonds.

[00:26:24] As a young person, before she discovered the music that the AACI would perform, Jodi was drawn to the white composers who had brought Black music into the concert repertoire.

[00:26:34] Jodi Gandolfi: I loved the music of George Gershwin and Aaron Copeland and Samuel Barber when they were writing, using the language of African American composers. And George Gershwin did that exclusively in his music. And from time to time, Copeland and Barber turned to that. So there we have some examples of classically accepted music that did incorporate musical elements that came from African American musical traditions.

[00:27:04]

[00:27:04] Jodi Gandolfi: In our experience, you know, with the music that we’ve programmed, very often there will be some harmonic vocabulary that is either derived from jazz or from blues or hymnity, and modes that were used in, uh, African American hymns. I’m thinking about, um, the art songs of Margaret Bonds. Both she and Florence Price were brilliant song composers, but in her art songs, you will hear wonderful harmonies that are derived from blues and jazz, and they bring this depth and richness to the music that is very beautiful, very powerful.

[00:28:12] This is something I find so interesting about the music of Valerie Capers. As LaDoris mentioned, she was a Julliard trained pianist. She turned to jazz, you know, a little later af after she had graduated and, you know, became a brilliant jazz pianist. But she, composed in both genres. She wrote in concert music style, and she wrote, uh, jazz arrangements.

[00:28:33] In her, large scale composition, she does something that’s very interesting. If it’s a multi movement work, and we’ve done, I think three or four of these now, there will be one movement that is in clearly, um, a blues or jazz style, a movement in gospel style, a movement that derives from the, you know, freedom song, spiritual style, and then something that’s clearly in the 20th century classical idiom, almost like post-Berg.

[00:29:02] And she just puts it together in one, one work, and it works, you know, because whatever she is trying to communicate, she’s using the language that she thinks, uh, fits whatever she’s trying to, trying to say.

The meaning of East Palo Alto as a home for this music

[00:29:16] Voiceover Suki: Although you now see performances of some of the composers championed by the African American Composer Initiative by major city orchestras, the AACI’s approach is strikingly intimate. LaDoris explains why their only venue is a school in East Palo Alto, California.

[00:29:33] LaDoris Cordell: We are based in Silicon Valley. And that’s when you think of it, that’s tech. It’s basically, uh, affluent communities and there is Stanford and there is Palo Alto. Palo Alto’s, the home of Mark Zuckerberg. And it was, um, the founder of Apple, all of that, right? And that’s in one county.

[00:29:56] And then if you cross, literally cross a freeway, you’re in another county, which is East Palo Alto. The county is San Mateo County. Palo Alto’s in Santa Clara County. So when you cross the freeway, and this was back in the, let’s say in the seventies, East Palo Alto, which is 2.6 square miles, that’s all it is, was a low income, predominantly black and brown community.

[00:30:20] Today, gentrification has hit, it’s, um, a demographically more diversified community. Um, it is less and less African American, fewer and fewer. It has the largest Tongan population in the country outside of Tonga. And it is, has a Latino population.

[00:30:41] So we do our concerts at Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, uh, because that’s where, first of all, that’s where we started. And, and secondly, it’s because that school is a school, um, that is a private school where the students there are, I believe it’s ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades, and all of them, for the most part, almost all of them are first generation kids graduating from high school and going on to college. And I encourage folks to uh, go on their website, Eastside College Preparatory School. All of them are there on full scholarships. So it isn’t about anybody being better than anybody. They come in, they all have full scholarships and they all graduate and they all go to university or colleges. And when I say that, I’m not just saying they all, I mean literally they all, and this is for more than 20 years, they all graduate and they all 30 years and they all go, uh, to college.

[00:31:42] So we’ve chosen to, to perform there in this small community. And I’ve had people say to me, why don’t you, you know, expand? ’cause you, your audiences are always packed. Why don’t you go to Palo Alto? And I just look at them and say, you really don’t get us! This is where we started. It’s a diverse community and the audience, this is what I love so much. The audiences are diverse. Um, we have folks who would never ordinarily be in an interacting, let alone sitting next to each other. White folks, Black folks, Asian folks, that doesn’t matter. Uh, folks come in and they’re drawn in by the music and they come back. So we really have a loyal audience that continues to grow.

How bringing this music back has affected each of the founders

[00:32:49] Voiceover Suki: Forming the African American Composer Initiative has literally been life changing for each of them, so I ask them to talk about what they’ve gained personally. Here’s Jodi, then Deanne, and finally LaDoris.

[00:33:01] Jodi Gandolfi: Sometimes I’ve said to myself, well, why didn’t I get interested, why didn’t I know about this earlier? But when I think about it, I, All of my experiences in music, my education, you know, I studied piano, I studied chamber music, I learned how to teach, I learned how to coach singers and instrumentalists, worked with composers. And then in San Francisco and this whole Bay Area, I met so many fantastic players and, you know, got to work with them.

[00:33:26] I learned in my, you know, my studies, which were quite academic, along with performing how to do research, you know, all these skills, and also I did a lot of self-producing of concerts, worked with choral people, you know, lot, so much wonderful experience. But I never dreamed that I was gonna be able to put all of that experience in the service of this project.

[00:33:47] it’s opened up my life so much, in addition to the fact that I, you know, I find the music just extremely moving and it’s opened my consciousness about, you know, our American history.

[00:34:00] I’ll just say briefly that, so much of the music that we perform has to do with the history of African Americans in this country. You know, it has to do with the institution of slavery. It have something to do with the freedom movement, with, uh, gaining voting rights with individuals who have been, um, highlighted in some of this music, individuals like Sojourner Truth, Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King.

[00:34:27] I don’t know, all of my experiences and skills put in the service of what this project does, has just been a great gift in my life.

[00:34:37] Deanne Tucker: Getting to know Jodi and studying piano with her has been one of the great joys of my life. And when she asked if I would help with this project, I couldn’t have been happier to be able to use the skills that I could bring to the table in service of this amazing project. I have a background in technology and so I was able to do a lot of the work that, is needed for a project like this.

[00:35:01] And, uh, she also asked if I would play piano solos, which was a little daunting, but exciting and I’ve had a chance to learn a lot of wonderful music. She’s used my percussion background. I’ve had to become something of a stage manager.

[00:35:18] I had, um, taken some classes in audio production and recording technology, and I get to use some of that in assisting with the audio engineer. I’ve been doing work with the website and producing the videos and putting them on YouTube, which I think is just amazing that we have all of our performances up there for everybody to watch for free, anywhere in the world. And so it’s, yeah, it’s been fantastic.

[00:35:45] LaDoris Cordell: So if you wanted the perfect combination of individuals to form an organization like the African American Composer Initiative, we are it. We are they. So you’ve got Jodi, who is fabulous pianist, knowledgeable about music, and now probably in my view, the most knowledgeable person maybe on the planet about African American composers. She’s the one who puts together these programs, um, programs the music and decides who does what, whatever, and comes up with a theme.

[00:36:21] Then you have Deanne, formerly a rocket scientist, and with all of her expertise in addition, and I encourage folks to go on the website and just watch and listen to her piano solos. They’re just out of this world. So she brings, as she said, all of these, this expertise because we desperately needed, from website to producing videos to putting programs together. Our concerts include not just the music, but we have visuals, sometimes we have audio, things that are on a screen. We’re really educating people as well as entertaining them.

[00:36:58] So with respect to me, my professional life has been devoted to the law, uh, starting off, you know, practicing law, then going on the bench for 20 years and then off the bench and still doing legal work, volunteering. So what this initiative has done is really enabled me to bring the joy back into my life with the music. Um, I, I love the law. The law was my passion, but not in the same way that music. And music touches the soul.

[00:37:31] And so I grew up, uh, in a black Baptist church in the east coast, outside of Philadelphia, singing on a choir with my two sisters. Um, and now I’m, it’s the music’s back, it’s back now, um, for me. And, and it’s just been a wonderful way, one, particularly in these trying times, it’s a wonderful distraction. Wonderful distraction, meaning, you know, there’s so much going on, I have to turn off the tv ’cause the news is just so overwhelming and, and so negative. And then here we have this music, and these concerts that we have to look forward to. It’s really has changed my life for the better. Brought music back in a whole way I never, ever imagined would happen.

[00:38:13]

The music that touches or inspires usSegment 3: Passing the torch

[00:39:17]

[00:39:32] Voiceover Suki: This is your host, Suki Wessling. The African-American Composer Initiative started with the idea of finding and performing the under-recognized work of Black composers in the concert idiom, what is generally known as classical music. You have been listening to a selection from William Grant Still’s Folk Suite Number Two.

[00:39:51] But as they got to know contemporary composers, they found that not only did the music performed at their concerts widen to include jazz and popular music, but they found unexpected joys in the process. Here’s LaDoris.

[00:40:06] LaDoris Cordell: One of the highlights of my time with the Initiative is my meeting and performing with Valerie Capers. She attended Julliard and graduated with not one, but two degrees, uh, bachelor and Masters. And what has made her especially unique, in addition to getting two degrees from Julliard, is that from the age of six and a half, she has been blind. She, um, was born with sight, and then, uh, through unfortunate circumstances, when she was six, became ill. And her optic nerves eventually were destroyed because of this illness and rendered her blind. And that’s actually when her musical genius began to blossom.

[00:40:51] So I met Valerie, as Jodi pointed out when we invited her to actually come and perform at our concerts. And at one point, one of the pieces I love that she, I love so many of them, um, one of them was, from her portraits in jazz called, um, it was, what is it, Jodi, the Billie’s Billie’s

[00:41:11] Jodi Gandolfi: Bill Billie’s song.

[00:41:13] LaDoris Cordell: Yes. And is dedicated to Billie Holiday. So I played this and, and I was like, oh my God, it’s the most beautiful piece. And I was so touched that I sat down one day and I wrote lyrics to it. Now, you can’t just take a composer’s music and write lyrics. I mean, you just can’t do that. So I wrote these lyrics and I I then sent them to her and asked her, would it be, would this okay that I had done this? And she was so receptive. Yes. And in fact, since then, this was several years ago, she now, I mean, she has the lyrics and she sends them to people who want to perform Billie’s song.

[00:41:49] And then I had, this is just like, you think, you know, this is all there is. There’s more than that because when she came out and one concert, she played the piano. John played the bass. There was percussion. I was able to sing it and be accompanied by this fabulous composer and pianist.

[00:43:27] Voiceover Suki: Here’s Deanne Tucker speaking about her solo on Three Inventions for Piano by Jeremiah Evans. You can find the video she created for it on YouTube.

[00:43:36] Deanne Tucker: With the background at NASA, and having studied science, there are actually a couple of composers who wrote pieces that intersected with that interest in mind. But the one that really was amazing to me was Jeremiah Evans wrote a set of pieces,And there were three movements. Uh, one is called Heron’s Engine, one is Archimedes’ Spiral and one is DaVinci’s Flying Machine. And I realized that people in the audience wouldn’t know anything about the first two in particular, and I thought some visuals would be helpful.

[00:44:09] And in COVID, one of the things I learned to do was produce films. And I started making really fun films and I thought, well, let me see if I can make some films that can be played while I am playing these pieces.

[00:44:53] Voiceover Suki: Jodi Gandolfi talks about the spark that started the AACI down the path of commissioning works from living African American composers. She and LaDoris heard a young composer named Joshua McGee speak at the Jack and Jill Society, whose purpose is to introduce children to and help preserve African American cultural traditions and to develop leadership.

[00:45:13] Jodi Gandolfi: He was one of the invited guests to help inspire the children. And, he got up and he talked about being a composer and his enthusiasm about composing was just infectious. And then he sat down and he played an original piano piece.

[00:45:28] And I took note, this was before we actually started the AACI, I think it was a year or two before. I just thought, well, this is someone to, you know, watch out for. Then we began the AACI. And as I started doing my reading about various composers, I realized every composer needs an advocate, that word we used before and someone who’s interested in playing their music.

[00:45:54] So I looked him up. Turned out he was just about to graduate from Cal State, uh, Hayward as it was called at that time. And LaDoris and I drove over to his senior recital. It was very beautiful. And I said, you know, I think it’s important that we commission a young composer, you know, for our, our programs.

[00:46:12] So we invited him over to my house and, we have one of our ensembles is a trio, piano trio, and Yolanda Rhodes is our soprano soloist. So I invited Yolanda, to join me and, uh, LaDoris and talk to Joshua about, a commissioned work he had that just graduated. He was thrilled by the, uh, prospect of doing this.

[00:46:33] And so, you know, I said, yeah, so why don’t you, you know, find a text and then, you know, get back to me. And, I think in less than a week, he got back to me with not just any text, but an original text. And it was a very, oh, powerful text. The title was, uh, Where Freedom Rings.

[00:46:52] So, that next concert, you know, we programmed that work. And I have to say it was, it was quite a challenge, you know, uh, difficult piano and string parts and a very involved vocal part, but, you know, very accessible to the audience and a very powerful message.

[00:47:08] I loved playing it. Uh, and it’s one of the pieces we recorded when we did a CD of music by contemporary composers. So that was the beginning of our relationship with him as our kind of resident composer.

[00:47:37] Voiceover Suki: The African American Composer Initiative started as a way to bring alive long forgotten concert music by Black composers. But the exclusion of Black composers from the modern concert repertoire is an ongoing issue. I asked LaDoris Cordell why it was important to include modern composers interwoven with work from the past.

[00:47:56] Suki Wessling: We want to make certain that these young composers don’t end up like their predecessors, meaning, their music not being heard, not being appreciated when that’s what composing music is all about, for it to be performed, to be played for others to hear, to enjoy, and to be moved. You know, it’s really interesting, Suki, at a time like this when, uh, to even say the initials, DEI can get people in trouble. Uh, we are standing up to that and saying, you know, this is about equity and inclusion and diversity and music, particularly the music world should always be about this. So it, it’s a statement about this and flying right in the face of those who would say, you know, DEI is out, don’t even say the words. We say ’em loud and clearly. Um, and it’s also a statement to the young composers. There are folks like us here who want your music appreciated We’re gonna commission these works and see what, you know, what we can do as individuals and also as an organization, to promote you and your music.You brought it LaDoris, right where I was planning to go, which is your project,in this time and for all of us, what it means to you personally and what you think it means for our culture to continue to double down on the importance of, diversity, equity, and inclusion,What does it mean to be doing this work in this time to you personally and what you think that the work is contributing to our culture?

[00:49:34] Jodi Gandolfi: We are more dedicated than ever to doing what it is that we do and to performing the music that we perform. And you talked about DEI, I also want to add the word truth telling and historical truth telling. If you, you know, look at the music that we have performed, so many of these composers have expressed the truth of their existence and the truth of the African American experience through their music. And some of these situations, you know, you can read about and have empathy, but if it’s encapsulated in music that conveys the emotional impact of these situations, the impact is inescapable. It is so powerful. And this is, this is truth. This is mu truth told through music. And, uh, we are not gonna, uh, we’re not gonna stop doing that. And, uh, we’re gonna continue to find more and more, elucidate more and more, and, our commitment’s unwavering.

[00:50:36] Deanne Tucker: One of my goals all along has been to get the word out about the resources that we have available, beyond our community. And so in the last year or so, we put together a list of all of the universities, who have music programs, whether they be at historically black colleges or not, that might be interested in the resources, the database that we have of all of the performances and the sheet music.

[00:51:04] And we sent an outreach email to everybody on that list , because I think it’s such a valuable resource and it’s in perpetuity. This website is available all the time and nobody’s telling us to take it down, and nobody can tell us to take it down.

[00:51:22] Jodi Gandolfi: And that is such an important part of, of, uh, what we do. ‘ Cause we love playing the music, we love sharing it with our audience, but, a big goal is to encourage others to do the same and to continue or to carry on their own, uh, research efforts and, commissioning projects and so on.

[00:51:40] LaDoris Cordell: Our music is always relevant. Um, it may surprise some people, well, wait a minute. Why is this spiritual relevant? Why is, and it’s like, come to the concert, you will understand why. Uh, one of the things I do at the concert is, um, I’m the mc kind of, so I talk about, uh, a little bit about the composers. You’ll see their images on a screen and maybe even hear from some of them from earlier recordings, those who are not with us. And it’s really opening the minds of people to understand that there’s so much, um, to the music that is composed by, not just African Americans, but you know, all these composers, people being creative with music.

[00:52:27] Music is the universal language. It’s the one language, it’s universal everywhere and I just view what we’re doing in that performing arts space that holds about, what, about 200 people, maybe? Um, and we only do two concerts a year, one weekend, a Saturday and a Sunday. And it’s always a weekend before the Super Bowl. And, and these 200 people, I, I guarantee you, they leave, and if, you were to join us, I guarantee you will leave feeling so much better than when you entered, one because of the people with whom you are sitting and also what you’re getting from the music and listening to these fabulous musicians, um, perform all of this music.

[00:53:11] So, I, I, you know, this has certainly enriched my life and I just want to share it and then, enrich as many lives as we can.

[00:53:19] Jodi Gandolfi: We haven’t really talked much about the other members of the ensemble. We just have fantastic musicians and I think, uh, with the exception of one, this music was completely unknown to them before.

[00:53:32] And I think, you know, when first approach about this, they’d be sort of, oh, what is this about? And immediately they would just be drawn in and they, every single one has come back. We haven’t, we haven’t lost a single player. They, they come back every year. So the group has gotten bigger and bigger. But they’re players from the San Francisco Symphony and from the ballet and the Opera Orchestra, Othello Jefferson, a brilliant tenor. Our soprano soloist is just, uh, exquisite. Our percussionist plays with the major symphonies in the area. They’re all really, really accomplished musicians. Our wind players are the, you know, among the best jazz players in the Bay Area, and they, they come back year after year because they love the music. And they also, they love the fact that we’re doing this at East Side College Prep. We, we actually make all of our ticket sales, uh, we, we donate them all to the school. So we have to, you know, uh, do our fundraising separately to cover our production costs. But they love doing this in support of that goal, which is a really worthy goal.

[00:54:33] LaDoris Cordell: I think it’s important to point out these musicians, they’re not paid. So we don’t say, come do this and we’ll get- No. Uh, we. Our organization, we function and we’re able to put on these performances, one, uh, it’s because we raise, we have to do fundraising, um, and part of that fundraising, we raise sufficient funds and we’re able to, um, at least make gifts, stipends, whatever we want to call it to the musicians. But they don’t, they’re not doing it because, oh, we’re gonna get a stipend because we don’t have that much to give. They’re doing it because of the love of the music and response that they get from the audience there. Um, but if anyone does want to donate, um, they can donate to the AACI, and it’s tax deductible, because we have an umbrella organization, InterMusic SF, that’s our fiscal sponsor, and the money would then go to them and then allocate for us to put on our performances each year.

[00:55:30] Jodi Gandolfi: Yeah. Yeah. And our sponsor, InterMusic SF, it’s a wonderful organization. They sponsor about 40 groups throughout the Bay Area. All groups that are making music and service to the community.

[00:55:42] Suki Wessling: This is something that is an issue with a lot of concert music these days is that, that it’s not a moneymaking opportunity, maybe it never really was. When we, when we look at, at the history of classical music, there was a lot of patronage and the money came from somewhere, but never as a sort of for-profit venture the way that popular music has been able to

[00:56:06] survive.

[00:56:08] Jodi Gandolfi: Mm-hmm. That’s true. Yeah.

[00:56:10] Suki Wessling: So we all need our patrons.

[00:56:13] Jodi Gandolfi: Yeah. We’ve had wonderful donors. We have our donor base is our audience.

Dream Variations

[00:56:17] Voiceover Suki: Florence Price wrote a piece called My Dream, and she used Langton Hughes’s poem, Dream Variations, as the inspiration. I asked LaDoris Cordell to recite the poem before we hear the music.

[00:56:28] LaDoris Cordell: Dream variations by Langton Hughes To fling my arms wide in some place of the sun. To whirl and to dance till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening beneath a tall tree while night comes on gently dark like me. That is my dream to fling my arms wide in the face of the sun. Dance whirl, whirl till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening, a tall slim tree. Night coming tenderly, Black like me.

[00:57:15]

[00:58:50] Voiceover Suki: Many thanks to Jodi Gandolfi, LaDoris Cordell, and Deanne Tucker for speaking with me about the African American Composer Initiative. You can find links to their work and much more on the show page at Babblery.com. Please also visit their website, aac initiative.org, for all the music that they’ve illuminated through their performances.

[00:59:10] Thanks for listening.

[00:59:12] .

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