Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water for cello & piano; Zelkowicz (cello), Wright-Ivanova (piano) скачать в хорошем качестве

Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water for cello & piano; Zelkowicz (cello), Wright-Ivanova (piano)

Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) was an American composer, pianist, arranger, and teacher. One of the first Black composers and performers to gain recognition in the United States, she is best remembered today for her popular arrangements of African-American spirituals and frequent collaborations with the poet Langston Hughes. She was the first Black woman to perform with the (at the time) all-White and all-male Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the first Black women to have her music broadcast on European radio, the first African American woman to have her music performed widely in Africa. Bonds’ early career demonstrated her astonishing versatility and resolve: she composed art-songs and popular songs, founded an arts academy in Chicago, worked as an audition pianist as well as a dance and vocal accompanist, and was a piano-duo partner, soloist and teacher. She moved to New York City in 1939 and found work at Harlem’s Apollo Theater as an editor, arranger, copyist, composer and even lyricist, where her music was played and recorded by the likes of Cab Calloway and Glenn Miller. As the mid-century entered into a more urgent Civil Rights Movement, Bonds’ work was ever-shaped by her racial identity and her close collaborations with Langston Hughes, which resulted not only in art-songs such as Three Dream Portraits (1959) but also major theatrical works such as Hughes’ Shakespeare in Harlem (with incidental music by Bonds) and the cantatas Ballad of the Brown King (1961, nationally broadcast and subsequently performed in the West Indies and Nigeria) and Simon Bore the Cross (1964), both of which centred on Black characters within a biblical narrative. She founded the Margaret Bonds Chamber Music Society as a way to champion Black composers, and served on the music committee to establish the Harlem Cultural Community Center. Troubled Water began its life as a solo-piano work titled Group Dance Based on the Spiritual ‘Wade in the Water’ which Bonds used to close her recital debut in Town Hall, New York, on 7 February 1952. Tracing its origins to African-American slavery, ‘Wade in the Water’ is considered a jubilee song, so-named after the Jubilee Singers who first popularised this music as an art form. The simple melody belies the layered meanings in its text: Wade in the water Wade in the water, children Wade in the water God’s gonna trouble the water Bonds arranged Troubled Water herself in 1964 as a showpiece for cello and piano. This paraphrase for cello adds to the vocal quality and textural variety of Bonds' original solo piano version. This performance was recorded by Aron Zelkowicz and Christina Wright-Ivanova as part of their album on the Toccata Next label, American Vignettes: a collection of contemporary American works for cello and piano based on popular idioms. Troubled Water for cello and piano was still unpublished this performance was filmed in November 2023. Since then, it has been published by Videmus as part of their African American Music Series. https://toccataclassics.com/product/a... Aron Zelkowicz, cello https://aronzelkowicz.com. Christina Wright-Ivanova, piano https://christinajwright.com Recorded at Fraser Studio, WGBH Boston Audio engineer: Téa Mottolese Audio mastering and editing: Antonio Oliart #cello #chambermusic #duo #american #classicalmusic #africanamericanculture #sonata #gospelmusic