May 18, 2024 Concert Program

Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra

Marshunda Smith, Music Director

May 18, 2024 | Fusion Lowell, Lowell, MA

DARING DIVAS American Women Composers of the 20th & 21st Century

Spring, Sprang, Sprung commissioned and premiered by Parlando (2022)
Mason Bynes

Adagio Frances McCollin

Ethiopia’s Shadow in America Florence B. Price

I. Introduction and Allegretto - The Arrival of the Negro in America when first brought here as a slave II. Andante - His Resignation and Faith III. Allegro - His Adaptation - A fusion on his native and acquired impulses

- INTERMISSION -

Symphony in E minor Op. 32, “Gaelic” Amy Beach

I. Allegro con fuoco II. Alla Siciliana III. Lento con molto espressione IV. Allegro di molto

Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra Musicians

The Daring Divas

Mason Bynes - spring, sprang, sprung

Mason Bynes is a New York based composer, vocalist, and multimedia artist from Sugar Land, TX. In a post-modern tradition, she pulls from various stylistic sources, blurring the line between traditionalism and modernism. Her goal in creating music and art is to bridge the gap between genre and sound in order to bring listeners together. She received her Master of Music in Composition from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and she also holds a Bachelor of Music in composition from  the University of North Texas. Mason’s musical curiosity fuels her pursuit of collaboration in a myriad of artistic mediums, including film, spoken word, music for acoustic performance, and even the culinary arts. Bynes currently serves as a career coach at New York University after years of coaching emerging artists at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Mason continues to sing and perform with a variety of ensembles, including  The Boston Pops' Holiday Pops Singers. This season, she is looking forward to the premiere for her latest piece for wind ensemble with The Concord Band, and the reprise of her work "The Wanderer's Tethering" with Castle of Our Skins. For more information click here.

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Frances Mccollin - adagio

Frances McCollin (1892 –1960) was an American composer and musician, who was blind from early childhood. She was the first woman to win the Clemson Prize from the American Guild of Organists. In 1951, she was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania. When Frances McCollin was five years old, she became blind. Her parents and extended family took an energetic approach to her education at home, focused on music. When she started to compose in girlhood, her father was her first teacher and transcriber. As a child, she described sensations consistent with synaesthesia and perfect pitch. In her lifetime, McCollin's works were performed frequently by professional and amateur vocal ensembles, and by orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Vancouver Symphony, and others.

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Florence B. Price - Ethiopia’s shadow in america

Florence Bea(trice) Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on 9 April 1887. She began learning music from her mother at an early age and gave her first piano performance at age four, reportedly publishing a composition (now lost) at age eleven. She graduated high school at the age of sixteen and in that same year was accepted into the New England Conservatory (Boston). Florence became the first black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra when Music Director Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played the world premiere of her Symphony No. 1 in E minor on June 15, 1933, on one of four concerts presented at The Auditorium Theatre from June 14 through June 17 during Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition. The historic June 15th concert entitled “The Negro in Music” also included works by Harry T. Burleigh, Roland Hayes, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and John Alden Carpenter performed by Margaret A. Bonds, pianist and tenor Roland Hayes with the orchestra. Florence Price’s symphony had come to the attention of Stock when it won first prize in the prestigious Wanamaker Competition held the previous year.

The tone poem Ethiopia’s Shadow in America belongs to this early cluster of works, for it was completed in time for the competition won by her symphony. (This work garnered an honorable mention.) In this piece, the first page of the manuscript score explains that she wanted the music to portray “I—The Arrival of the Negro in America when first brought here as a slave. II—His Resignation and Faith. III—His Adaptation, A fusion of his native and acquired impulses.” This three-part arc traces the historical American experiences of enslaved Africans and aligns conceptually with certain works of figures associated with the Harlem Renaissance, such as Will Marion Cook, William Grant Still, and Duke Ellington. Listeners familiar with Price’s other orchestral music will be pleased to encounter her characteristically lush orchestration, harmonic richness, and, above all, keen melodic sense. New listeners will find music that blends the orchestral sonorities of the late 19th century with a distinctly American sensibility. For more information click here.

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Amy Beach - SYmphony in E Minor Op. 32 “ Gaelic”

Amy Beach (1867-1944) was one of the most successful American composers of her era. Born Amy Cheney in Henniker NH, she began composing as a child, and more than 300 of her works were published in her lifetime. Known as the first female composer to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra (her “Gaelic” Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896), she was also one of the first U.S. composers to have her music be recognized in Europe, and the first classical U.S. composer to achieve success without the benefit of European study.

A remarkable child prodigy, she made her public debut as a pianist in 1883, also the year of her first published compositions.  In 1885 she performed with the Boston  Symphony, but upon her marriage to the distinguished surgeon, Dr. H.H.A. Beach, she curtailed her performing in accordance with his wishes, and focused on composition.  She made one performance per year, with the proceeds donated to charity, and one of these performances was of her own piano concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1900.  Following the death of her husband in 1910, she resumed performing, and toured Europe to great acclaim, performing  her own music, until the onset of WWI. For more information, click here.

The first movement of the “Gaelic” Symphony employs one traditional Irish melody, and also borrows from her own song “Dark is the Night.” It begins with an agitated swirling rustling in the strings, building into the bold strokes of the first theme. This theme and the lyricalsecond theme are drawn from Beach's song, which begins “The sea is full of wand’ring foam.” The tripartite second movement, features the Irish folk song, “Goirtin Ornadh” (“The Little Field of Barley”). Beach praised the “sweetness” of that movements’ Siciliano melody when she heard it in 1890. The second movement was consistently the favorite of audiences in Beach’s day. The third and longest movement uses two folk tunes: a mournful lullaby, “Paisdin Fuinne” (“The Lively Child”) also known as “Cushlamachree” and a brighter second tune, “Cia an Bealach a Deachaidh Si” (“Which way did she go?”). The fourth, and final, movement, Beach wrote that it “tries to express the rough, primitive character of the Celtic people, their sturdy daily life, their passions and battles, and the elemental nature of the processes of thought and its resulting action.” All thematic material in the Finale derives its origin from the first movement material drawn from her song, “Dark Is the Night.”

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