#ClassicsaDay #BlackHistoryMonth Week 3 2025
By Ralph Graves
February is Black History Month and a logical time to highlight contributions by people of color to classical music. Those contributions have been significant — and not just in the past 50 years.
This month’s #ClassicsaDay challenge is to post musical examples of works by composers of color, or classical music recordings made by people of color. There is a lot to choose from.
Here are my social media posts for the third week of #BlackHistoryMonth.
2/17/25 Adolphus Hailstork: Symphony No. 1
Hailstork has been a professor of music and the Composer-in-Residence at Norfolk State University, an HBCU. He composed his first symphony in 1988 for the Ocean Grove, NJ Summer Music Festival.
2/18/25 Ulysses Kay: Chariots – An Orchestral Rhapsody 1978
Kay’s “Chariots” was commissioned by the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. It was premiered in 1978 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The composer conducted the performance.
2/19/25 James Lee III: Shades of Unbroken Dreams (Piano Concerto)
Lee’s Piano Concerto was premiered in 2023. It was written for the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It reflects on how much (and how little) progress has been made since then.
2/20/25 Shawn Okpebholo: Zoom
Zoom was commissioned by the US Air Force Band which premiered it in 2021. The title refers not to speed, but to the software that connected people during the pandemic.
2/21/25 Alvin Singleton: In My Own Skin
this work was premiered in 2011. The work depicts the sometimes uneasy alliance between different creative worlds — in this case, jazz and classical music.
