SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

SUMMER, 2018

VOLUME SIX NUMBER ONE

SONNY ROLLINS

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

TEDDY WILSON

(July 14-20)

GEORGE WALKER

(July 21-27)

BILLY STRAYHORN

(July 28-August 3)

LEROY JENKINS

(August 4-10)

LAURYN HILL

(August 11-17)

JOHN HICKS

(August 18-24)

ANTHONY DAVIS

(August 25-31)

RON MILES

(September 1-7)

A TRIBE CALLED QUEST

(September 8-14)

NNENNA FREELON

(September 15-21)

KENNY DORHAM

(September 22-28)

FATS WALLER

(September 29-October 5)

George Walker

(b. June 27, 1922)

Walker is the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, which he received for his work Lilacs in 1996. He is the first African American to appear as an instrumentalist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing Rachmoninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto. He is the first African American to receive a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music, from which he also received an Artist Diploma in piano. His many distinguished teachers include the likes of Nadia Boulanger. He has composed over 90 works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, solo instruments, and chorus, which have been performed by most of the major orchestras around the world.

http://stringsmagazine.com/composer-george-walker/

GEORGE WALKER

At 95 Composer George Walker Sustains a Creative Life That Is of a Very Rare Order

June 27, 2017

He occupies more than one slot in the pantheon of American music. Along with breaking through the race barrier multiple times, as a piano virtuoso and as a composer, George Walker continues to sustain a creative life in his 90s that is of a very rare order—one reminiscent of Elliott Carter and Henri Dutilleux. Just before celebrating his 95th birthday in June, Walker shares his thoughts about a richly productive life.

by Thomas May
Strings Magazine

Photography by Frank Schramm

When he published his memoirs in 2009, George Theophilus Walker chose the title Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist. It was at the keyboard that he first formed his musical identity, starting when he was five. Precocious musically and intellectually, Walker graduated from high school at 14 and in the yearbook announced his intention to become a concert pianist—which is precisely what he proceeded to do, in characteristic Walker fashion. With unwavering determination, he initially focused on his career as a performer.

“I come from a family of pianists,” Walker points out during a recent conversation from his home in Montclair, New Jersey. Born in 1922, he grew up in an arts-loving household in Washington, DC. His father, a Jamaican immigrant, had arrived in the United States with just a few dollars but became a respected physician who taught himself piano for enjoyment; his highly musical mother watched over George’s first lessons. Frances Walker-Slocum, his sister (now 93), also became a professional pianist and a professor of the instrument at the Oberlin Conservatory, from which George graduated at the age of 18, having concentrated on piano and organ.

When Walker began studying composition in graduate school at the Curtis Institute, it wasn’t so much an end in itself as it was a secondary activity. “I had so much energy that I wanted to do something else after spending hours practicing at the keyboard!” Walker recalls. He also believed learning the secrets of composing would help hone his interpretive skills performing the classic repertoire.

Just two weeks after Walker’s debut at New York’s Town Hall in 1945, he appeared as the soloist in Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. He was later signed to National Concert Artists, a dominant management company at the time. All of these were first-time achievements for an African-American instrumentalist. Walker’s musicianship earned positive reviews, and he undertook an extensive European tour in 1954, during which he continued to win more acclaim.

Yet coveted performance opportunities remained frustratingly scarce. In a 1982 interview with the New York Times just before the premiere of his Cello Concerto (a New York Philharmonic commission), Walker lamented that “those successes were meaningless, because without the sustained effect of follow-up concerts my career had no momentum. And because I was black, I couldn’t get either major or minor dates.” He noted that fellow white students at Curtis “were assured of 25 to 30 concerts a season, but I was lucky if I got seven. It was like being excommunicated from society. I was unwanted.’’

Eventually, despairing that his musical life was at a dead end, Walker found himself compelled to divert his extraordinary gifts from performance into the realm of teaching. And, little by little, into writing his own music. In the process, Walker gradually added a varied and challenging catalogue of work that has made him a genuine American cultural treasure. Now, at age 95, he additionally belongs to the rarefied ranks of composers who remain creatively active at an advanced age.

Though he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1996 for Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra—a magnificent, densely textured setting of the poetry of Walt Whitman—much of Walker’s output remains unjustly neglected. A great place to start exploring his work is his array of compositions for strings. “I never played a string instrument, but somehow strings have always fascinated me,” remarks Walker. “I can’t explain why that is.”

That perspective may explain something of the originality of this composer’s extensive writing for strings. Among these works are solo, chamber, and orchestral scores (the concertante pieces have been commissioned by such first-class ensembles as the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra): Bleu for unaccompanied violin, two quartets, a pair of violin-piano sonatas, violin and cello concertos, Poeme for violin and orchestra, Dialogus for cello and orchestra, a viola sonata, and a cello sonata. “I always wanted to write something for each of the string instruments,” says Walker, though the double bass remains a challenge he has yet to cross off his bucket list: “I find the instrument is too easily covered by the orchestra.”

“In playing his Cello Sonata, you’re engulfed in a state of beauty and episodic turmoil,” observes Seth Parker Woods, a maverick American cellist and performance artist who is a rising star of the young generation. “One of the things I love is that its amazing melodic lines fit perfectly in the hand, as if they were molded all along for a cellist. It’s a brilliant work that I really would love to see more and more younger and older cellists performing. George Walker’s music is of monumental status and importance.” Woods is also a member of the UK-based Chineke! Orchestra, which is on the BBC Proms roster this summer with a program that will include Lyric for Strings, Walker’s most frequently performed work.

“In playing his Cello Sonata, you’re engulfed in a state of beauty and episodic turmoil.”

—Seth Parker Woods, cellist

In fact, Lyric originates from a string quartet. Walker wrote it as a very young man, in 1946—when he still identified above all as a pianist, and before he had begun to remake himself as a composer. It began as the brief, profoundly moving second movement (Molto Adagio) of his String Quartet No. 1. Walker made this into an independent piece for string orchestra, à la Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, who had also been taught at the Curtis Institute by the violinist-composer Rosario Scalero, one of Walker’s most formative mentors.

As a student of piano and composition at Curtis, Walker took lessons from Rudolf Serkin, violist William Primrose, and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. Scalero in particular imprinted on him a work ethic and a sense of rigor and discipline that have guided him ever since. “Composers today don’t have teachers who believe in the same way in the importance of studying counterpoint and the elements of skill. But I think you need to absorb and understand what other composers have done in the past before you can set about changing and creating something new. What will represent your own voice will come out.” He emphasizes his advice to young composers: “Listen to lots of music.” He’s an unabashed advocated of the “canon,” of “pieces that have achieved a certain status such that you don’t have to question their quality, so the task becomes to understand what it is that makes up that quality.”

As his graduation piece, Walker wrote a sonata for violin and piano he decided to disown—even though the hard-to-please Scalero had liked it. Then, soon after his Town Hall debut that year (in 1945), “for some reason, in my early 20s, I was determined to write a string quartet. I had just written the first movement and was starting the second when I learned that my grandmother had died,” Walker recalls. The string orchestra version of the Adagio, dedicated to her memory, received its premiere via radio broadcast, under the title Lament.

Family connections have played a crucial role in Walker’s creative work throughout his career. He dedicated his 1991 Poeme—the revised version of an earlier violin concerto that is “by no means a tranquil piece”—to his mother, and his Violin Concerto (2008) is a late-period masterpiece whose impetus was a father’s love and admiration for his son. With his former wife, the music historian Helen Walker-Hill (1936–2013), Walker had two sons who both became artists. Ian Walker is a playwright, actor, and director based in San Francisco (he authored Dutch, about the famous art forger Han van Meegeren); older brother Gregory Walker followed more directly in his father’s footsteps and pursued a career as a musician, but chose the violin in lieu of the family tradition of piano.

“Gregory really had no aptitude for the piano, but then he discovered the violin and became fascinated,” Walker remembers. After studying with Yuval Yaron, a pupil of Heifetz, Gregory Walker went on to become concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. He teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder (where Walker was a visiting professor in 1968) and has also become involved in the realm of electronic music and video art as well. Walker composed the Violin Concerto “in secret” to present as a gift, hoping to give his son’s career a major boost.

A loan from the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation enabled Gregory Walker to unveil his father’s concerto playing the 1718 Strad on which Zoltán Székely gave the first performance of Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto in 1939. After the premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Neemi Järvi in 2009—64 years after his father had broken through the race barrier to play Rachmaninoff’s Third with the same ensemble—Gregory took it on tour to Europe and recorded it (with Ian Hobson conducting the Sinfonia Varsovia).

In 2010 Gregory Walker recounted the story of his living with the Violin Concerto for Strings, where he pithily but aptly summed up the character of his father’s music as well known “for its craftsmanship, intensity, and complexity. It’s not easy listening, but dad believes if the music is perfect, it will speak for itself.” Along with providing a musical gift for his son, George Walker wanted to create a work “that would be totally different from the standard repertoire, using the orchestra in a different way.” He mentions such features as a full-on fugue in the final movement’s exposition.

Walker wrote a sort of addendum for his son in 2011 with the solo violin piece Bleu—extremely difficult music in a complex, painstakingly crafted idiom. “I thought it would be nice to write an encore for Gregory to use in recitals,” the composer explains with a sly note in his voice (fully aware of how technically fiendish the piece is). Last year violinist and conductor William Harvey completed a project in which he performed for one week in each of the 50 states in the United States; he played Bleu in all of his concerts.

Throughout his lengthy career, Walker has never been content to rest on laurels. He is a mindful, consummate craftsman who believes music has something serious and ennobling to convey. His works in recent years do not follow the pattern of radical simplicity and paring down associated with some composers’ “late-period” style. Indeed, there has been an intensifying complexity of the harmonic language and polyphony. In his latest large-scale project, the still-unheard Sinfonia No. 5, Walker addresses the 2015 Charleston church massacre by incorporating a brief, poetic text he wrote, which is shared by five narrators. He also weaves in musical references to a spiritual, a hymn, and Americana.

Walker here has devised a technique of combining musical fragments that he likens to the situation of the Tower of Babel. “No one can understand each other, no matter how hard they try. Musically, each presentation of the quoted material preserves its distinctiveness, but this is all entwined in a rigorous recurrence of the principal idea. I’ve never done that before, where the principal idea recurs in various guises so consistently.”

“This late-in-life drive in his music is really quite remarkable,” says Pierre Ruhe, the Alabama Symphony’s director of artistic administration and former classical critic of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You hear this enormous capacity and need to communicate.” Ruhe believes that Walker’s music will make its breakthrough to wider recognition “when a major conductor champions his music and does so consistently.”

In the meantime, Walker continues to follow where his musical instinct takes him. “More and more, I realize the power of music—the power of the interval, of rhythm, of being exact in what I put down as what I meant to hear.”

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/george-walker-mn0001191248/biography

George Walker

(b. June 27, 1922)

Artist Biography by James Reel

Although he started out as a highly promising concert pianist in a grand style (some of his most prominent concerts featured concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Brahms), George Walker was writing substantial music from his mid-twenties. By the time he was 40, he had solidly established himself as a flexible, fully contemporary composer and it is on his large catalog of works produced from the early '50s to about 1990 that his reputation will rest.

He studied piano through childhood, going on to obtain degrees in performance from Oberlin (bachelor of music, 1941) and the Eastman School of Music (doctor of musical arts, 1957). He also studied at the Curtis Institute and with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory, Fontainbleau. His teachers included Rudolf Serkin; Robert Casadesus; Mieczyslaw Horszowski; and in chamber music, Gregor Piatigorsky and William Primrose.

Walker seemed destined for a fine career at the keyboard. He won acclaim with his Town Hall debut in New York in 1945 and was the first black musician to play there. Also that year, he was the first African American instrumentalist to win the Philadelphia Orchestra auditions, which led to a performance of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 with that orchestra and Eugene Ormandy. He toured America and Europe as a soloist through the 1950s. During this period, his presence as a black man on the classical stage surely held curiosity value, but it was through his work as a pianist and subsequently as a composer that the African American presence in classical music began to seem unexceptional. From the mid-'50s, his teaching career included short stints at various colleges and long-term affiliations with Smith College (1961 - 1968) and Rutgers University (1969 - 1992, including two years chairing the music department).

"I believe that music is above race," Walker once said, and his own music does not strongly position him as an African American composer. His mature style grafts serialism onto neo-Classical forms, binding the two with complex rhythms, Hindemithian counterpoint, strong timbral contrasts, and occasional evocations of black folk music through reference to blues, spirituals, and jazz. He won the Pulitzer Prize (the first living black composer to do so) in 1996 for Lilacs, a work for soprano or tenor and orchestra, commissioned by the Boston Symphony.

Although he was an adept orchestrator, his acknowledged masterpiece is for solo piano: the 1956 Sonata No. 2, written as his doctoral dissertation for Eastman. It's a short work that displays Walker's fascination with classical forms (variations on a ground bass, sonatina), while insinuating a jazzy syncopation into the scherzo. It's not an entirely characteristic work, though, in its fairly conservative harmony. The same can be said of his most widely heard orchestral piece, the Lyric for Strings, a 1946 transcription of the second movement of his String Quartet No. 1. Two better examples of Walker's mature voice date from 1975: Piano Sonata No. 3 and Music for Brass (Sacred and Profane). Both are angular works reflecting Walker's fascination with sonority. His more populist but still dissonant mode is well-represented by 1990's Folk Songs for Orchestra.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2015/aug/27/george-walker-african-american-composer-pulitzer-prize

George Walker: the great American composer you've never heard of

The first African American to win the Pulitzer for music is celebrated for overcoming cultural prejudice, but his work is so good this should only be a sideshow to the main event of his compositions

by Tom Service

27 August 2015

The Guardian (UK)

A life of firsts … George Walker poses by his piano at his New Jersey home around the time of his Pulitzer award in 1996. Photograph: Mike Derer/Associated Press

There is a lot to catch up on: a 93 year-old composer with one of the most remarkable lives in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, and I’ve only just discovered his music properly. George Walker was the first African American to win a Pulitzer prize for music (in 1996, for his Walt Whitman song-cycle, Lilacs), and his career as a pianist and composer is, especially in his early decades, a story of firsts. He was the first black graduate of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia in 1945, the first black musician to play New York’s Town Hall in the same year, the first black recipient of a doctorate from the Eastman School in 1955 (you can hear his remarkable performance of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, conducted by the composer Howard Hanson here), the first black tenured faculty member at Smith College in 1961 – and many more.

Those achievements tell their own story of the prejudices, lack of opportunities, and segregated cultural life of those decades in America, and are also part of larger narrative in which black performers and composers have been silent or ignored over the decades and centuries. Think of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the so-called Black Mozart, who composed string quartets, symphonies and concertos in the late-18th century, and who influenced Mozart in Paris – Wolfgang pilfered one of Saint-George’s ideas in his Sinfonia Concertante K364, as Chi-chi Nwanoku’s recent Radio 4 documentary revealed. He was also one of the era’s greatest violinists and orchestra leaders, who catalysed Haydn’s Paris Symphonies. As if that were not enough, he was also one of the most accomplished gentlemen anywhere in Europe, a famed fencer and socialite, but his music isn’t performed anything like enough now. It’s fitting George Walker has honoured him in his flighty, angular, swashbuckling Foils for Orchestra: Homage à Saint George.

But from interviews that Walker has given recently, including one this week in the Washington Post, it’s clear that while the story of overcoming cultural prejudice is part of Walker’s life story and is enfolded into his work, far more important to him is his ceaseless and rigorous focus on the craft and quality of the music he writes. According to the Washington Post, Walker is working on a symphony at the moment, a piece that will follow his catalogue of four Sinfonias, the last entitled Strands and composed in 2012. Walker’s recent music – like Strands, the turbulent Sinfonia No 3, or the teemingly energetic and mercurial Movements for Cello and Orchestra – has a sharp-edged clarity in its modernist dissonances and angularity, and yet you feel his essential desire to communicate with his audiences throughout.

Amid the turbulence and vivid, dissonant drama, there is always a sustaining structural line that makes Walker’s music compelling and coherent. His most famous and most performed work is from much earlier in his career, the Lyric for Strings from 1946 (originally part of his String Quartet No 1), a warmly yet unsentimentally nostalgic song for string orchestra, and that seam of lyricism is still there half a century later in Lilacs, albeit filtered through a much greater expressive richness and complexity. While there are traces of Walker’s musical heroes – such as Hindemith and Stravinsky – in his musical language, he has created a distinctive world that is modernist and multifaceted yet richly communicative. It’s music that deserves to be celebrated and performed in this country – his music has never appeared at the Proms, for example. I’ve only, belatedly, begun my journey into his output, which also includes a large catalogue of chamber music; if you haven’t already, I suggest you start now!

Five essential George Walker works

Lyric for Strings (1946): Walker’s most performed piece – and you can immediately hear why, with its immediacy and warmth.
Lilacs (1996): Walker’s Pulitzer-winning setting of Walt Whitman.
Sinfonia No 4, Strands (2012): a compact, 10-minute symphony.
Movements for Cello and Orchestra (2012): music of vivid, expressionistic power.
Sinfonia no 3 (2003): another concise, tempestuous orchestral essay.

http://georgetwalker.com/

George Walker

1996 Pulitzer Prize in Music

"George Walker is one of the greatest composers of our time"

(Fanfare Magazine, Jan/Feb 2015)

"Yes, he's a great composer. " - Philadelphia Inquirer, October 31, 1996

"Walker is an outstanding pianist." - American Record Guide, April 2007

"The music of George Walker is accessible, rhythmically defined, and ultimately life enhancing."
-Fanfare Magazine, 2008

"Music that shows a master composer at work." - Audiophile Audition, 2011

http://georgetwalker.com/bio.html

George Walker

"This composer has finally gotten the recognition he deserves"
--Zubin Mehta, conductor (Star Ledger, April 14, 1996)

Biographical Information

Contents:

Early Years
Career

Early Years:

George Theophilus Walker was born in Washington, D.C. June 27, 1922 of West Indian-American parentage. His father emigrated to the United States, where he became a physician after graduating from Temple University Medical School in Philadelphia. George Walker's mother, Rosa King, supervised her son's first piano lessons that began when he was five years of age. His first teacher was Miss Mary L. Henry. Mrs. Lillian Mitchell Allen, who had earned a doctorate in music education, became his second piano teacher.

Before graduating from Dunbar High School at age 14, George Walker was presented in his first public recital at age 14 at Howard University's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel. He was admitted to Oberlin College as a scholarship student in 1937 where he studied piano with David Moyer and organ with Arthur Poister. In 1939, he became the organist for the Graduate School of Theology of Oberlin College.

Graduating at 18 from Oberlin College with the highest honors in his Conservatory class, he was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music to study piano with Rudolf Serkin, chamber music with William Primrose and Gregor Piatigorsky, and composition with Rosario Scalero, teacher of Samuel Barber. He graduated from the Curtis Institute with Artist Diplomas in piano and composition in 1945, becoming the first black graduate of this renown music school.

contents

Career:

George Walker was presented in a debut recital in Town Hall, New York by Mr. and Mrs. Efrem Zimbalist. With his "notable" debut, as it was described by the New York Times, he became the first black instrumentalist to perform in that hall. As the winner of the Philadelphia Youth Auditions, he played the 3rd Piano Concerto of Rachmaninoff with the Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormandy conducting two weeks after his New York debut in November of 1945. He was the first black instrumentalist to appear with this orchestra. The following year, he played the 2nd Piano Concerto of Brahms with the Baltimore Symphony, Reginald Stewart conducting and the 4th Beethoven Concerto with Dean Dixon and his orchestra. In 1946 George Walker composed his String Quartet no. 1. The second movement of this work, entitled, Lyric for Strings, has become the most frequently performed orchestral work by a living American composer. In 1950, George Walker became the first black instrumentalist to be signed by a major management, the National Concert Artists. In 1954, he made an unprecedented tour of seven European countries, playing in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and England in the major cities of Stockholm, Copenhagen, The Hague, Amsterdam, Frankfurt a Main, Lausanne, Berne, Milan and London with great acclaim.

Upon returning to the United States, he taught at Dillard University in New Orleans for one year before entering the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree Program at the Eastman School of Music in 1955. In 1956, he became the first black recipient of a doctoral degree from that institution as well as an Artist Diploma in Piano. George Walker was awarded both a Fulbright Fellowship and a John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1957. He was the first composer to receive the Whitney award. He spent two years in Paris where he had composition lessons with Nadia Boulanger. In 1959, he embarked upon another tour, playing concerts in France, Holland and Italy. After a recital in London in Wigmore Hall in 1963 that was sponsored by Mrs. Efrem Zimbalist, he received an honorary membership in the Frederic Chopin Society there.

George Walker's distinguished career as a teacher continued in 1960 with faculty appointments to the Dalcroze School of Music, The New School for Social Research, where he introduced a course in Aesthetics, Smith College (1961-68) (where he became the first black tenured faculty member), the University of Colorado (1968-69 as Visiting Professor), Rutgers University (1969-92, where he was Chairman of the Music Department), Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (1975-78) and the University of Delaware (1975-76, where he was the recipient of the first Minority Chair established by the University). He has given Master Classes in many institutions including the Curtis Institute of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Columbia University, Wayne State University, Wellesley College, Temple University, Washington University (Saint Louis, Mo.), Williams College, Montclair State University and the University of Colorado.

George Walker has composed over 90 works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, strings, voice, organ, clarinet, guitar, brass, woodwinds, and chorus. His works have been performed by virtually every major orchestra in the United States and by many in England and other countries. His awards include the Harvey Gaul Prize, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and Bennington Composer Conference Fellowships, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Rockefeller Fellowships, a Fromm Foundation commission, two Koussevitsky Awards, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Award, the Mason Gross Memorial Award, numerous grants from the Research Councils of Smith College, The University of Colorado, Rutgers University, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts. He has received two Alumni Awards from the Eastman School of Music, the University Medal from the University of Rochester (1996), honorary doctorate degrees from Lafayette College (1982), Oberlin College (1983), Montclair State University, Bloomfield College, Curtis Institute of Music (1997) and Spelman College (2001).

George Walker has received important commissions from many ensembles that include the New York Philharmonic (Cello Concerto), the Cleveland Orchestra (Dialogus for Cello and Orchestra), the Boston Symphony (Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra), the Eastman School of Music (An Eastman Overture) , the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2), the David Ensemble (Five Fancies for Clarinet and Piano Four Hands), Affiliate Artists and Xerox (Guido's Hand), the Pew Charitable Trust (Piano Sonata No. 4), The Boys Choir of Harlem (Cantata), The Cleveland Chamber Symphony (Orpheus), New Jersey Symphony (Pageant and Proclamation), the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust (Modus), the New Jersey Chamber Music Society (Wind Set), Maryland International Piano Competition (Bauble), Columbus Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra (Tangents), New Jersey Youth Symphony (Icarus In Orbit), and the Network for New Music (Abu). In 2005 George Walker was commissioned by the Las Vegas Philharmonic to compose a work to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Las Vegas. This work is entitled, Hoopla (A Touch of Glee). Also in 2005., he completed a second commission from the Eastman School of Music with Foils (Homage to Saint George ) for Orchestra. The New York Philharmonic also premiered (In Praise of Folly) (1981) that was televised nationally on the PBS program, "Great Performances". His compositions have been recorded for CBS, Mastersound, Desto, C.R.I., Serenus, Da Camera Magna, BIS, Orion, Mercury, GM and Albany Records. Some of the major conductors who have performed the music of George Walker include Andrey Boreyko, Andrew Davis, Comissiona, DePriest, Eschenbach, Paul Freeman, Jarvi, Levi, Maazel, Mata, Mehta, Muti, Ozawa, Rostropovitch, Robert Shaw, Joseph Silverstein, Skrowaczewski, Slatkin, Tortelier, Hugh Wolf, and Zinman.

In 1996, George Walker became the first black composer to receive the coveted Pulitzer Prize In Music for his work, Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra, premiered by the Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa conducting. Prior to that distinction, his Dialogus for Cello and Orchestra nominated by the Cleveland Orchestra for the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 after its premiere, was the only finalist in this competition. In 1997 Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC proclaimed June 17th as George Walker Day in the nation's capitol. In 1998, he received the Composers Award from the Lancaster Symphony and the letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for "his significant contributions to the field of contemporary American Music." In 1999, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In April 2000, George Walker was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

He also received in May the Dorothy Maynor Outstanding Arts Citizen Award for 2000 from the Harlem School School of Arts. In March of 2001, the Detroit Symphony awarded him their first annual Classical Roots Award for a lifetime of achievement in American Music. George Walker has been awarded the annual A.I Dupont Award presented by the Delaware Symphony for 2002. In 2003 he was selected for inclusion in the Washington Music Hall of Fame (Washington, DC). In 2005 George Walker was named Honorary President of Ebb and Flow Arts in Maui, Hawaii. A Proclamation from the Borough President of Brooklyn, NY designated April 6, 2005 as " A Celebration for Dr. George Walker." Albany Records released a 60th Anniversary Retrospective featuring the Liszt Piano Sonata played by George Walker that was hailed "a magnificent performance" by Amazon.com. In January of 2007 George Walker received the annual Legacy Award from the National Opera Association. Also in 2007 the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by James Depreist gave the New York premiere of the Sinfonia No. 3 after its first performance by the Detroit Symphony conducted by Andrey Boreyko. Several years earlier the Juilliard School of Music presented a program entitled, "George Walker: A Musical Perspective". In July 2009, Scarecrow Press released "Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist", an autobiography.

In 2009 the Philadelphia Orchestra under Charles Dutoit gave the New York premiere of Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra in Carnegie Hall in the series of concerts promoted by Jessye Norman called " Honor". Also in 2009 the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra received its world premiere in brilliant performances by the soloist, Gregory Walker, the concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic. The Philadelphia Orchestra was conducted by Neeme Jarvi. In May of 2010 KUSC FM in Los Angeles presented a five hour program hosted by Jim Svejda of the music of George Walker. In June he was honored by Trilogy, an opera company in Newark, NJ. NPR designated the Albany Recording, Troy 1178, "George Walker: Great American Orchestral Works, Vol. 2", one of the five most outstanding cds of contemporary American Music for 2010. He became the first black composer to be performed at the Cabrillo Festival in 2011 when Foils for Orchestra (Hommage a Saint George) was played. Additional awards in 2011 were received from the National Council of Negro Women and the Newark School for the Arts. The Sinfonia No. 4 commissioned by the New Jersey Symphony received its premiere in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in March of 2012. It was also performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony and the National Symphony. The Sinfonia No. 4 (Strands) was also played at the Cabrillo Festival in 2013. The National Symphony hosted a series of sixteen concerts entitled "Summon The Heroes" for public school students in Washington, DC. The Lyric for Strings was performed on all of these concerts in November of 2012 and March of 2013. In May of 2012 George Walker delivered the Commencement Address at the Eastman School of Music and received a Doctor of Music Degree. He also received the Aaron Copland Award from ASCAP during this month. Gregory Walker gave the world premiere of "Bleu for Violin Unaccompanied" at the Library of Congress in April of 2013. The work was performed for the first time on a copy of the famous Betts Stradivari from the Stradivari Collection of the Library of Congress. Movements for Cello and Orchestra received its premiere by the Sinfonia da Camera conducted by Ian Hobson at the University of Illinois in November of 2013.

Historical recordings of the Mass by George Walker, his live performances of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Beethoven Emperor Piano Concerto were released in 2014 by Albany Records. A total of seventeen cds, six of which are devoted to performances of works in the standard piano repertoire and six in a series of Great American Works have been issued by Albany Records since 1994.

contents
Home

http://georgetwalker.com/recent_publications.html

Selected Works

Contents:

Orchestra:

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2007)
Foils (Hommage a Saint George) for Orchestra (2006)
Hoopla ( A Touch of Glee) for Orchestra (2006)
Sinfonia No. 3 for Orchestra (2002)
Sinfonia No. 4 for Orchestra (2013)
Icarus In Orbit (2002)
Pageant and Proclamation for Orchestra (1997)

Chamber Orchestra:

Abu for Narrator and Chamber Ensemble (2003)
Tangents for Chamber Orchestra (1999)

Chamber Music:

Bleu for Solo Violin (2011)
Da Camera(2008)
Wind Set for Woodwind Quintet (1999)
Modus for Flute, Oboe, English Horn, Two Guitars, Mandolin, Violin and Cello (1998)

Organ:

Two Pieces for Organ: Prayer and Improvisation on St. Theodulph

Spires for Organ (1998)

Solo Piano:

Piano Sonata no. 5 (2003)

Vocal:

And Wilt Thou Leave Me Thus for Baritone and Piano (2002)

Take, O Take Those Lips Away for Baritone and Piano (2002)

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Home

http://georgetwalker.com/reviews.html

George Walker

Reviews

"An underheard American Master"
(Fanfare Magazine, July/August 1997)

Contents:

Orchestra:
Address for Orchestra (1959)

"A rewarding composition to hear. " (Audiophile Audition)
"A Master handler of brass and wind sections." (Allmusic)
"A major piece of great energy and thrust whose three movements are culminated by a moving Passacaglia" (San Francisco Chronicle)
"A powerful Passacaglia" (N. Y. Times)
"The product of a craftsman whose compositional horizons are international, this is an evocation filled with strength and urgent communication- the metrical patterns constantly fluctuating and creating a rhythmic impression of linear propulsiveness, the sonorities strange and experimental, the harmonic language highly chromatic." (Baltimore Sun)

An Eastman Overture (1983)

"A tight-knit, brilliantly orchestrated and dramatic work" (Washington Post)

Folk Songs for Orchestra (1990)

"Folk Songs for Orchestra....these moving transformations of simple melodic elements-- encased like gems within Walker's sensitive, original, meditative settings--into far-ranging statements invite repeat listening." (Amazon.com)

Foils for Orchestra (Hommage a Saint George)
(2005)

"Rambunctious and stormy throughout. It is a work of deep-seated conflict with its churning themes and emphatic accents." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Hoopla (A Touch of Glee) (2005)

"Energetic paean . . . strength and will combined with vibrancy and more than a bit of boldness." (Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Lyric for Strings (1946)

"Deserves to be as popular as the string elegies by Grieg, Faure and Elgar". (Classical New Jersey)
"Intense, haunting, lyrical beauty" (News Journal, Mansfield, OH)
"Hushed beauty and passionate intensity" (American Record Guide)
"A gorgeous find" (Cincinnati Enquirer)
"A finely crafted and deeply felt piece" (Philadelphia Inquirer)
"Intensely moving and beautiful" (High Fidelity)
"It reminds one of Barber's Adagio for Strings, only less sentimental and ultimately, more profound" (Baltimore Evening Sun)
"A Masterpiece!" (Fanfare Magazine)
"One of the most beautiful pieces ever written" (News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware)
"A Gem." (Baltimore Sun)
"As a piece of gentle art . . . it has few peers." (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Pageant and Proclamation (1997)

"A statement of tremendous power" (Classical New Jersey)
"Colorfully scored for large orchestra, it moves from fanfare to serenity and ends with a noble brass phrase from "We Shall Overcome". (New York Times)
"A powerfully affirmative tone poem" (Records International)

Sinfonia No. 1 (1984)

"Incandescent Colors" (Audiophile Audition)

Sinfonia No. 2 (1990)

"A work filled with dramatic momentum and vivid orchestrational details" (New Music Box)

Sinfonia No. 3 (2003)

"Rugged expressiveness... muscular, thrusting gestures... a dark prism of colors ...a clangorous finale" (Detroit Free Press)

Sinfonia No. 4 (Strands) (2012)

"Arching melodic lines mirroring the graceful columned arches above the performers" (Santa Cruz Sentinel)

"A characteristically eloquent piece of 14 minutes...packed with gripping ideas and fragrant sound colors" (Memeteria)

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Concertos:

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1975)

"The blockbuster of the evening, full of poetry and pyrotechnics" (Washington Star)
"A mastery of serial effects with the more traditional values of dramatic statement, effective instrumental color, attractive melodic motion" (Washington Post)

Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra (1957)

"A bold virtuoso vehicle of considerable melodic and rhythmic power that speaks with a deeply personal voice" (High Fidelity)
"The finest work of its kind for trombone" (The Music Connection)

Dialogus for Cello and Orchestra (1976)

"A technically brilliant showcase for a virtuoso cellist" (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
"It's effervescent concentration and spindle-woven melodic content are a joy to hear" (Audiophile Audition)

Poeme for Violin and Chamber Orchestra (1991)

"An elegantly crafted piece by a distinguished composer" (St. Paul Pioneer Press)
"Dramatically expressive, lyrically intense". (Record International Catalogue)

Violin Concerto (2009)

"An evocative works by an under-appreciated American master" (American Record Guide)
"Destined to achieve a legendary status" (Naxos)
"It's dissonant and colorful, and shifts suddenly between drama and beauty, tension and motion. Gregory Walker played the concerto with precision and rapturous immediacy. This concerto is an evocative work from an underappreciated American master. " (American Record Guide)
"A treasure trove... thoroughly engaging on first listen and even more rewarding in subsequent hearings. " (New Music Box)

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Chamber Orchestra:

Tangents (1999)

"A work of originality and power" (Records International Catalogue)
"Powerful, weighty stuff." (Music and Vision)

Orpheus (1994)

"vividly colored (especially dramatic use of the brass) .. filled with jagged flashes of emotion". (Record International Catalogue)

Folk Songs for Orchestra (1990)

"A tone-poem-like transformation of simple melodic elements into an expressively far-ranging statement" (Washington Post)

Serenata for Chamber Orchestra (1983)

"A work of challenging sonorities in three subtly contrasted movements... a strong spirit commemorated with dignity, distance, and power" (Detroit Monitor)

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Chamber Music: Abu (2004)

"Powerful...wondrously luminous" (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Poeme for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble (1987)

"A masterpiece of musical blend . . . a devastating work, deserving of greater attention. " (Schenectady Gazette)

Sonata for Violin and Piano, no. 1 (1958)

"Powerful authenticity and dramatic expression...truly great music." (Classical New Jersey)
"It's astonishing to this listener that Walker's Violin Sonata No. 1 has yet to become a staple for recitalists... This is beautiful, deeply moving music, straight from the heart, and its appeal to the most traditional of audiences is virtually guaranteed" (Star-Ledger, Newark)

Cello Sonata(1957)

"A revelation, showing the composer's command of architectural and expressive elements". (The Gramophone)

Violin and Piano Sonata no. 2 (1979)

"Walker's Violin Sonata is a knockout". (Tucson Citizen)

String Quartet no. 2 (1968)

"The writing is delicate, clear-textured and fluid, sensitive to the need for dramatic phrases as contrast and highlight. For all its transparency, the music has admirable momentum, fostered less by strong rhythms than by the constant variation in instrumental color" (New York Times)

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Piano Music:
Prelude and Caprice (1945, 1941)

"Prelude and Caprice....Superb craftsmanship" (Classics Today)

Guido's Hand (1986)

"A remarkably eloquent piece" (Star-Ledger, Newark)

Sonata for Piano, no. 1 (1953)

"Bold and compelling, with arresting harmonies". (Seattle Times)
"A Major work... comparable to Barber's Sonata" (Fanfare Magazine)
"In a word, masterly" (New York Times)

Sonata for Piano, no. 2 (1956)

"Powerful, idiomatic piano writing" (Buffalo News)
"An acknowledged masterpiece" (Barnes and Noble. com)
"A tragic, haunting score" (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Sonata for Piano, no. 4 (1984)

"The Piano Sonata is a stunning, spacious work". (American Record Guide)
"A distinctive work of American modernism- complex, yet immediately appealing, built, for the most part, on the contrast between stark proclamations and more lyrical passages, leading to a rousing toccata" (New York Times)

Sonata for Two Pianos (1975)

"This terse sonata was notable for its inventive fantasy and magical piano writing... Here is a most effective addition to the piano repertory which should be heard again and often. Terrific piece!" (San Francisco Chronicle)
"This composition is bristling with ideas, motoric energy, sophisticated craftsmanship and, in the adagio, incandescent beauty" (The Jewish Week)

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Vocal Music:

Cantata for Soprano, Tenor, Organ, Boys Choir and Chamber Orchestra (1982)

"This is a haunting, inventive piece... thought-provoking yet accessible" (Fanfare Magazine)

Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra (1995):

"Tersely eloquent" (New Yorker)
"Melodies soar above the orchestra like the star and bird symbols in the text" (Detroit Free Press)
"A poignant and dramatic work with a strongly lyrical vocal line and strikingly original orchestration." (Records International Catalogue)
"A dense, dark work that penetrates deeply into the soul of Whitman's response to the assassination of a great leader" (Atlanta Constitution)
"There is wonderful music in this cycle, which is profoundly responsive to the images of the text- you can hear the sway of lilies in the rhythm, smell their fragrance in the harmony" (Boston Globe)
"A style of great emotional espressivity...The masterful text-setting is accompanied by imaginative, evocative orchestral writing". (Barnes and Noble.com)
"A work of great surface beauty and immediacy of appeal. The vocal line soars and spirals in melismas of ardent grief; the music captures the sway and fragrance of lilacs as well as the freedom of a bird's flight". (Boston Globe)
"Masterpiece". (The Audiophile Voice)
"Lilacs revels in orchestral imagery…poignant brooding and a quietly glittering exultation". (Los Angeles Times)

Mass for Soloists, Chorus, Organ and Orchestra (1977)

"A powerful and poignant re-interpretation of the liturgical meaning of the ancient Latin text" (Baltimore Evening Sun)

"A grand work"(All Music)

Songs

"Walker is at his finest. Each one is a gem". (American Record Guide)
"Walker's way with Emily Dickinson is distinctly personal and powerful" (American Record Guide)
"The songs are as outstanding as they are varied" (Fanfare Magazine)
"Intriguing, sometimes daring melodies" (Houston Chronicle)

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Home

http://www.bruceduffie.com/walker.html

Composer / Pianist George Walker
A conversation with Bruce Duffie

One of the saddest days of my life was when WNIB was sold and changed format. For 45 years, it had been an all-classical station, and for just over 25 of those years it was my home. My entire career was wrapped up in "Classical 97," and it fell to me to pull the plug. For more details and photos, please read this article which I wrote for City Talk magazine about it a month later.

So what piece of music would have the honor and distinction of bringing this #1 classical station to a close? Amazingly, I had a few weeks to ponder the situation. Suggestions poured in from the big, obvious, triumphant bombast to the saddest melancholy to the strangely weird. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to keep the selection an absolute secret from everyone - callers, advertisers, even the management of the station. No one, not even my girlfriend who was with me in the control room [photo], knew in advance exactly how I would bring the place in for a landing.

I wanted something special, reflective, tender, strong, and positive to end. Rather than an announcement, I made my spoken farewell first and then my chosen musical work: Lyric for Strings by George Walker. The calls and e-mails which I received after that were bittersweet, but they all said the same thing - that I had spoken eloquently, and had chosen the absolutely perfect piece to end.

Purely coincidentally, about 5 weeks later the Chicago Symphony had scheduled this same work as part of their subscription concerts, and the MusicNOW series included a chamber work of Walker's. He came back to Chicago for these performances, and it was great to see him again after many years. He related to me that he'd been awakened early that fateful Monday morning by calls telling him that his piece had ended WNIB, and he said he knew instinctively that it must have been my idea because I had presented his music regularly in Chicago for so long.

I originally contacted George Walker in the mid-80s, and because a trip to Chicago was not on his calendar, we did the interview over the telephone. Several years later, he finally did come, and we met briefly during his crowded schedule. We kept in touch as his career blossomed and praise kept coming his way. Eventually, as we all know, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, so his stature and reputation are now absolute. What you are about to read is that conversation from February of 1987. Of course, Walker is one who will always stand by his beliefs and would never alter his outlook because of prominence, but these thoughts and ideas are, perhaps, more pure and untouched by wide-spread fame and recognition.

Here is that conversation:

Bruce Duffie: You've been teaching musical composition for quite a number of years?

George Walker: It hasn't been just musical composition. In fact, that's been a very limited part of my teaching. Over the years, my teaching has really centered around advanced theory courses, and since I've been at Rutgers, a number of other courses in music history, romantic music, 20th century music and orchestration and even conducting. I did teach composition for a few years at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. That was the only time in which I had a class of students rather than the occasional student taking 'special studies,' though the lessons were individual. There was never a great deal of interest in composition or students sufficiently advanced who wanted to continue in that particular area as opposed to music education or piano. I've taught piano ever since I started, though not in recent years, except for coaching students or young artists who were performing my music.

BD: I'm always curious, especially from a composer who has made a reputation from composing, to find out if musical composition is something that can be taught, or must it be innate from each individual?

GW: I have a very strong feeling that just about everything can be taught. I remember reading Ned Rorem's thought that musical composition cannot be taught, but my attitude is simply that you can provide guidelines, instruction, and exercises for any aspect of musical endeavor. [See my Interview with Ned Rorem.] That goes for conducting, orchestration, and certainly for composition. This is not to say that you can, necessarily, be predictably successful in your efforts as you would in a theory course or even in orchestration. It's a matter of each person having to learn to make certain decisions. This is what I find to be one of the most important aspects of composition which one likes to link with creativity. Trying to make decisions about what you want to use, how you want to use it, how long you want to use it. I think a teacher teaching composition has a tremendous advantage. When a student presents something to him, he's not personally involved in having made those decisions. He is at some distance from whatever is shown to him. I also feel that because composition is really a revelation of one's personal taste and personal choice, it becomes difficult to criticize or to correct. While I think it's essential if one really has confidence in one's own taste, I like to tell students, "The ego is really involved. The ego is what determines, in part, one's sense of taste." So one has to be extremely tactful in dealing with composition students because it comes down to a simple matter of hurting their feelings. [Laughter]

BD: Where is the balance, then, between technique and inspiration?

GW: I really don't like the word 'inspiration.' I like very much what Nadia Boulanger said because I always felt that this was the essence of what people call inspiration - finding. One finds something.

BD: So it's really discovery?

GW: It is discovery. It's not something that descends like a mantle from above or something that one senses through smell or taste. It is a matter of encountering something that provides the genesis to motivate the direction in which you want to go.

* * * * *

BD: When you're teaching music history, do you encourage the students to write pieces on their own as well as just learning about pieces which have been written by others?

GW: I do that in my advanced theory course, using the technique of following models. In other words, setting up parameters for the student. I feel very strongly that students need the kind of guidance where they must work within certain boundaries in terms of form. The idea is to follow a style which I don't teach but do imply. I haven't had a lot of students who are advanced, and those who are, in the sense that they have tried advanced techniques, often lack basic techniques of harmony and counterpoint, which still provide the foundation that most composers don't have today. Therefore, the music of the past is something that we must understand, be able to dissect and analyze, and even duplicate in part so we can better understand what is good taste, what is the essence of a well-constructed work.

BD: By 'good taste,' do you mean on the part of the composer or the public.....

GW: Good taste on the part of the composer. The public we can't do anything about. They swallow what's given to them or they regurgitate it.

BD: No middle ground?

GW: Well, the middle ground is always a person who says, "That's interesting," or "That's nice." [Laughter]

BD: What do you expect of the public that comes to a concert which includes your music?

GW: In one sense I don't expect anything because I know they're at a terrible disadvantage which consists of certain obvious factors that are extremely important. They don't know how long the piece is going to be - even if they read the program notes, which the critics don't seem to do! They don't know what style the piece is going to be unless they have some experience with the composer over a number of works, and it might not follow what they do know of a composer's work. The only way to overcome that disadvantage is to have a performance that is scrupulously well-prepared and which attempts to represent the details of the piece, not just an overall kind of impression of it. The only thing one can hope is that the audience isn't going to reject the piece before they start to hear it, or even to stop listening after the piece has begun.

BD: Is this a problem that gotten better or worse in the last 15-25 years - the idea of an audience not wanting to hear something new?

GW: I don't really know whether one can say because we read reports of premieres of 19th or even 18th century composers. The idea of rejecting something, perhaps not from the point of view of the audience, but from the point of view of the critic, is something that is very frequent. Aside from a few outstanding examples of the audience creating an uproar at the Rite of Spring, there haven't been too many documented examples of audience rejection. We know about critical rejection and we know about composers rejecting other composers. In the 20th century we have such a diversity where the music is not conforming to a style of a particular period that the audience is going to be discriminating in both the best and worse sense. There's just so much to choose from and because of that, there's a certain amount that can be disposed of and regarded with an amount of dislike.

BD: Do you feel it's a good thing to have so many divergent styles available today?

GW: It's inevitable with the passage of musical time. The one lamentable thing is what I consider the state of musical pollution that exists. We can't escape from music in stores or even when we're walking in the street or taking the bus. That's the kind of thing which is most distressing to me.

BD: Would it be especially distressing to you to be in an elevator and hear a snippet from one of your own works?

GW: I would be a little embarrassed because I would be the only one who would know it, probably.

BD: Do you think that classical concerts should try to attract the kinds of numbers that the popular concerts get?

GW: I feel very strongly that what is known as Concert Music is music for the elite. I remember trying to explain one obvious difference between popular music or rock music and classical music: you have to sit still when you listen to classical music. This is what one expects, so it becomes a physical state for reception. One has to make an effort to receive what is coming and to try to determine what one is hearing. The greater part of the public isn't interested in doing that. They want to respond immediately to stimuli that are unquestionably strong and which require bodily movement. It's not that one can't experience a similar sensation when one hears a Strauss waltz, but the aspect of popular music infiltrating what is known as classical music, which is really extremely pronounced in certain types of composition, is still not what one necessarily associates with music like symphonies or large choral pieces or cello sonatas.

BD: Should we try to eliminate the great polarity between the two?

GW: Well, of course the reasonable thing simply is to try to get the larger public interested in the medium that is really essentially for the elite. I say elite not because I want to use the word, but simply because of the fact that it does represent a choice which we can't understand, we can't comprehend. It's not to say that a person who's brought up as a middle-class person is going to be part of the elite or a person who's family can be multi-millionaire is going to have any more understanding or any more desire. But there is something very special and very particular that grabs ahold of a certain type of person, and that person can be working in a car wash. I drove up to a car wash and before I turned my radio off some Strauss waltz was on and this man said to me, "That's my kind of music. I don't like that boom, boom, boom, boom."

BD: So then you're really talking about a state of mind that can be an individual thing that transcends monetary or class distinction?

GW: No, it's a temperament, I think. It's a temperament that transcends class or monetary distinctions. A predilection that, in a sense, we can't really always explain. You could find a violinist whose family ran a grocery store, but the father loved to play the violin at 9 or 10 o'clock at night and his wife used to sit and listen and maybe she would sing. That's, again, doesn't relate to the economic level.

* * * * *

BD: Let me change the subject just a little bit. Are you basically pleased with the performances that you have heard of your works?

GW: Some performances, yes. Some I've been less pleased with. [Laughter] I had 2 premieres just last week and they were both very good to excellent. I had another piece done the same week that was a good performance.

BD: Do you get involved with the performance of the work and make lots of notes and suggestions, or do you just sit back and let the performers find what they can in your music?

GW: I hold myself open for possibility of attending rehearsals. In the majority of instances I'm usually never asked to sit in on a rehearsal and so I find that I just have to take whatever comes. Overall I've had good results. There have been some disappointing performances and some inexcusable performances, but overall the results have been good. Now and again, I get a really excellent performance, but that's quite rare.

BD: Has there ever been an instance where performers have discovered things in your music that you didn't even know were there?

GW: Not really. Occasionally someone would say, "This sounds a little like Mahler." It's usually a reference to another composer, and I don't really think that I've been surprised. I've been more surprised by the way the music has been distorted than the fact that they've discovered something that would help the performance.

BD: What about the recordings?

GW: There is a certain unevenness there, even in my own performances. I'm very much interested in the sonic quality of recordings. One of my earliest recordings hasn't been bettered, but the sound is mediocre, and the engineer was really poor, I feel. The performance is good, however.

BD: Are you the ideal interpreter of your works?

GW: I think I know better what I want from the music than anybody. I want to re-do some of the things I've already recorded. [NOTE: In recent years, a number of new CDs of Walker's performances and compositions have appeared on the Albany label, and he is quite pleased with them. Also, his Pulitzer-Prize work, Lilacs, is on the Summit label.]

BD: With the proliferation of recordings today, do you feel it has done anything to affect either the audiences or the performers of new music?

GW: Recordings have made music available, even though the proliferation the same music becomes very confusing. With 12 or 15 different recordings of the Tchaikovsky 6th Symphony, it's very difficult to choose. It really doesn't make any difference if a reviewer says this recording is three minutes shorter than that recording. In the case of new music, which represents a very, very small percentage of what's done, as long as it's available in the catalogue, it then becomes useful. I feel quite strongly that we - the public and the musicians - have been manipulated by the elimination of the LP from the catalogue. Regardless of the merits or demerits of the CD, both of which could be argued very sensibly, the analogue catalogue represents a tremendous body of reference works. Even though many of them will be presented on CD, the absence of the Schwann Catalogue means you don't really know the existence of these recordings. It's rather pathetic to go into a store and try to find something. On the other hand, with the CD you have better sound sometimes. I'm particularly pleased with Frederick Moyer's recording of the 4th Sonata. He commissioned the work.

BD: I assume you get many commissions. Do you also have time to write things just because you want to get them out?

GW: Not really. I only have time to meet the deadlines of each commission.

BD: Then how do you decide which commissions you'll accept and which you'll decline?

GW: They've been coming in at a fairly steady rate, occasionally overlapping. But I have yet to be in a position to turn down a commission for lack of time to fulfill it.

BD: Is there a circumstance where you might feel you don't want to do a particular kind of piece?

GW: Right now I'm faced with a dilemma about a possible commission. I'm not quite happy with the circumstances under which the work would be presented. A number of my works have been for unusual combinations. In one case, the particular instrumentation was presented and I was firmly told that was the way it had to be, and I found that the piece became a rather interesting challenge to be met. Another work from a few years ago, for clarinet and piano four hands, is probably the only extent work of its kind.

BD: Have you written any operas?

GW: No, I haven't and I doubt if I will. From time to time in the past I've had a small amount of interest, but the idea of working with a librettist bothers me somewhat. I have thought about subjects or plots that I might find workable from a musical point of view, in the sense that they would seem to make the effort and time worthwhile to create a good work. But working with a librettist or even writing my own is something I just haven't been able to face.

BD: When you're writing a piece of music, how do you know when it's finished? How do you know when to put the pen down and decide there's no more tinkering to be done?

GW: The moment I stop and think, "When can I finish it?"

[Laughter] I like to get it finished as soon as possible. I try to find a logical point to end the piece. I'm not willing to allow it to go on and on and on, and then come back to decide where it should have been stopped.

BD: Is the act of composition fun for you?

GW: I don't regard music as fun at all. This is not to say I don't enjoy it, but maybe there is some kind of deep Puritan ethic I have that tells me I have to work at something and try to make it as good as possible. I am relieved when it's finished and feel that I have put together something that I can live with without being embarrassed or having to question it.

BD: Do you ever go back and revise works?

GW: Usually when I finish something there may be a note here or a rhythm there that bothers me and I don't quite know a more satisfying solution or replacement. If time passes and I go back, I'm usually able to find something that is more satisfying, but I work slowly enough that I must avoid any wholesale revision. I try to work very carefully when I start so I don't have to sort it out and start again.

BD: I just wondered if there were any old versions that musicologists will have to sort out later.

GW: I don't work that way. I try to work from beginning to end and try to arrive at a completely satisfying work with a few things that need to be punched up. Sometimes it takes a little time to do it, but there are no wholesale revisions.

BD: Is it generally wrongheaded for musicologists to try and look through composers' wastebaskets?

GW: Different composers have different approaches to composition. I think the wrongheadedness is related to trying to incorporate things the composer had obviously discarded into something that the composer intended to keep. I'm thinking specifically of the Symphonic Etudes of Schumann. Pianists these days are including in their performance some variations which were not published by Schumann, and in virtually every instance are inferior to what he decided to publish. This is done to generate interest. Discovering a 'new' work of someone becomes a long-lost masterpiece. The value of the discovery is inflated. It may deserve to be played, but it's usually far from being a masterpiece. In the long run, though, things even out and we know what the good things are and what's not so good.

BD: Should there be a place in the repertoire for pieces that are less than great?

GW: The so-called standard repertory is very narrow, and it's really a matter of elevating pieces that are sure-fire to a certain plateau. They are undoubtedly well-composed and well-structured and bear repetition. When you talk about pieces that are less good, the question becomes how much repetition can they stand?

BD: Then let me ask an indelicate question - how much repetition can the music of George Walker stand?

GW: That, again, is one of my primary objectives. I'm not really concerned with pleasing the public. I can't please the public because I don't know what the public wants. Even if I know what the public wants, I don't know that I could give it to them. I try to write something I'm going to be able to live with and hope that others will begin to find some of the things that I feel have given certain strength to the music. I don't really believe in creating something that doesn't have any strength.

BD: Are you conscious of the public at all when you're writing?

GW: I never think about the public. I never think about the performer. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for performers from a technical point of view. If it's within the range of their instrument, they can do it. Knowing that, I don't worry about whether or not it's going to be done.

* * * * *

BD: As you approach your 65th birthday, is there anything that has especially surprised you either about your own music or music in general?

GW: I couldn't say that I'm surprised. I felt all along that I would possibly get into synch with the world. I was clearly out of synch for a long time. I was ahead of my time as a pianist when the concert managers didn't want to accept a black pianist. I was writing music that wasn't performed except by a few people for a long time, and I made an effort to concentrate on getting my music published with no success initially and then little success, and all of a sudden I made the acquaintance of Paul Kapp, a very remarkable man who died a few years ago, and who published the bulk of my music because he believed in it. To him I owe an enormous amount of gratitude because without those publications, the performances of my music would be limited. He had a firm belief that it was important and should be widely heard, and the publication has provided me with a base to attempt to widen the awareness of my music.

BD: You brought up the situation of discrimination against the black performer. Has this situation improved over the years as much as you would like?

GW: No, it hasn't improved as much as I would like. Obviously I've had some wonderful opportunities, but considering the kind of satisfaction and critical praise my music has gotten, it would seem to me that I would have deserved even more performances by orchestras other than the New York Philharmonic. They have done five works of mine. Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis have done none. From the point of view of the success of the Black Composers Series of LPs, the praise was heaped upon them in general and specifically about certain of my works. I've been trying to find out if they will be re-issued on CD, but so far the full set is only due for release as an LP Box on the College Music Society label.

BD: I don't want to belabor the point, but I want to ask about how you're listed in various reference books. They give your name and your birth date, and say, "Black American composer and pianist." Would you rather it just be "Composer and pianist?"

GW: There are two sides to that. I've benefited from being a Black Composer in the sense that when there were symposiums given of music by black composers funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, I would get performances by orchestras that otherwise would not have done the works. The other aspect, of course, is that if I were not black, I would have had a far wider dispersion of my music and more performances. It's a two-edged sword and I think that one can take the stance that if you remove "black" from my name, it's going to be more meaningful because I'm still an outsider and will continue to be an outsider from the coterie of well-known and established white composers. Of course I'd like to have more performances by major orchestras because this is the area in which you reach the wider public.

BD: More so than recordings?

GW: If they don't know your name it's unusual for them to buy discs of your music. Of course if they read the reviews a lot of people have become interested, particularly if they associate a review with a particular medium. I don't know how many performances there have been of my Trombone Concerto, but when the work was written in 1957, Emory Remington, who was then teaching trombone at Eastman, said it could only be played by a couple of trombonists in the whole world. Now trombonists everywhere know the work, but there are few who ever have the opportunity to play solo with a major orchestra. I had to be persuaded to have a piano reduction made of the orchestral part. I was against it even though it seems almost kind of ridiculous to be against publication, but I thought it would not do justice to the piece.

BD: You wanted a concerto not a sonata!

GW: That's right, and I wanted all the colors associated with the orchestral textures. But my publisher kept after me and I finally said all right. Now trombonists know that the piano reduction is available.

BD: Did you do the reduction yourself?

GW: Yes I did.

BD: Then it's at least that much authentic!

GW: Yes. But coming back to the idea of reading reviews, sometimes a pianist will read a review of one of my sonatas and he or she might be interested in finding out whether it's something that would lie well in their hands or not. But this is done on an individual basis and I know it happens. Whereas you have an orchestral performance and all of a sudden there is a work out there in front of many people at once. It's not going to be completely comprehended but there are program notes and a biography and there is this group assembled to absorb the music.

BD: Are you optimistic about the future of music?

GW: I don't really think about the future of music. I always felt that there's an effort to try to predict that music was going in some direction, and after five or ten years it's obvious that that direction was leading nowhere and composers saw that. At the same time I'm against the "Music of the Future." This is nonsense from my point of view. First of all, I don't really think that there are any geniuses of the sort of Mozart and Beethoven around to 'direct' music into any particular style. Secondly, it just occurred to me today that the most important figures, at least from the 18th and 19th centuries, were composers who weren't really concerned with the future of music - meaning the experimentalists who think they had to find something by banging on a tin can in a parking lot. I'm talking about the persons who, on the basis of their awareness of the past and their own kind of personal intensity, have actually created synthesis. It's the synthesis that creates, for the most part, the works of importance. This is not to say that the works are going to be looking backwards. Any kind of creative effort must attempt to say something new, and if it's not a conscious attempt, it's a subconscious attempt to reveal something that is new from the point of the composer's background, experience and output.

BD: Is this the advice you have for young composers?

GW: Young composers must look ahead, but I don't try to advise young composers because those who have talent are obviously looking ahead and if their talent develops they will undoubtedly have the good sense to look not only ahead but also around them and absorb what there is from the past and present, and still think in terms of what they can forge for themselves that is different. I don't really know any young composers who are serious about developing into important composers. If there is enough talent and patience and hard work, they will eventually be able to come to terms with what they want to do and what they can do. My concern is not just writing one work or two works, but building a repertory of works.

BD: We hope that it continues for many years.

GW: Thank you very much.

A few days later, I received this letter from the composer.

This conversation was recorded on the telephone on February 14, 1987. Portions were broadcast on WNIB in June of that year, and again in 1992 and 1997. This transcription was made in 2004 and posted for use in New Music Connoisseur in their Spring issue.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017/05/15/george-walker-composer-american-outsider/

Magazine | May 15, 2017, Issue

An American Outsider

by Jay Nordlinger

May 15, 2017

National Review

Montclair, N.J. — George Walker greets me at the door, smiling and dapper. I figured he would be (dapper). Mr. Walker is a gentleman of the old school. I’ve never seen a photo of him when he wasn’t wearing a coat and tie. He is dressed that way now, in his own home. I have a feeling he wouldn’t welcome a guest any other way.

We are in Montclair, N.J., a town some 15 miles from Manhattan. “I’ve lived in this house since 1969,” Mr. Walker says. “I was the first black person in this neighborhood.” I ask whether he ever had any problems. No, he says.

Mr. Walker has many “firsts” to his credit. He was the first black person to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music, the famous conservatory in Philadelphia. He was the first black person to earn a doctorate at the Eastman School of Music, the famous conservatory in Rochester, N.Y. He was the first black person to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. And so on.

Obviously, Walker is a musician — a composer and pianist. That’s the right order, too. You can see it in the title of his autobiography (2009): “George Walker: Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist.” There is something else about the title: the word “American,” unqualified.
“I feel strongly about that,” Mr. Walker tells me. “I’ve always disliked being called ‘African-American.’” As he elaborates on this, he points out that his music is dotted with American tunes: hymns, spirituals, pop standards, and the like. You may not hear them — they are planted in this classical music. But they’re there.

This summer, Mr. Walker will mark his 95th birthday. His latest composition is his Sinfonia No. 5. It will be played by the National Symphony Orchestra, in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of the 2018–19 season. Mr. Walker spends much of his time doing three things: seeking commissions; seeking performances; and seeking recordings. That is the lot of a composer.

Speaking of D.C., he was born and raised there. When he was born — in June 1922 — Warren G. Harding was president. Mr. Walker’s father, also named George, had come from Jamaica. He was a doctor: a graduate of Temple University’s medical school, in Philadelphia. Mr. Walker’s mother, Rosa, was American-born and a high-school graduate. She worked at the Government Printing Office.

Both Walkers observed standards. They did not even use slang. Not even “okay,” which was spreading like a weed.
Mr. Walker knew his grandmother — his mother’s mother — very well. Her name was Malvina King. She had had two husbands. She lost the first one when he was sold at auction. The second had died. Mrs. King herself was an escapee from slavery. One day, young George asked her about it — the experience of slavery. She said one thing: “They did everything except eat us.”

In 1946, Mr. Walker composed Lyric for Strings, his best-known piece. It is dedicated to his grandmother.

He went to Dunbar High, the famous school in Washington — the most famous high school for blacks in all of America. It produced a who’s who of people, including Edward Brooke, the first black senator (popularly elected). Mr. Walker says that some of the teachers at Dunbar were very good; and some were not so good. He really valued his classmates.

One teacher he unquestionably valued was Clyde McDuffie, who taught Latin. They spent one year — fourth-year Latin — on the Aeneid. Mr. Walker can still recite the famous opening: “Arma virumque cano . . .” Also, the poem impressed on him the importance of duty above personal desire.

He graduated from Dunbar at 14. Did his father pressure him to follow in his footsteps as a doctor? Not at all. “He never brought up the subject.” Young George would be a musician. He went to Oberlin College in Ohio, which had been admitting blacks for a hundred years. George was the youngest student in the college, 15.

At Oberlin, he heard many of the greatest musicians of the day, including Rachmaninoff. He also heard Horowitz. “He was a pianist who made me aware of what the piano could do,” says Mr. Walker. He was not always on. Like many of us, Mr. Walker heard him great and heard him shockingly bad. But when he was on — there was hardly anything else like it.

There was another pianist at Oberlin, by the way: Frances Walker. Mr. Walker’s younger sister. Later, she would be a teacher on the same campus, the first black woman to become a full professor at Oberlin. She still lives there.
From Oberlin, Mr. Walker went to Curtis, where one of his teachers was Rudolf Serkin, a major pianist. Mr. Walker remembers everything Serkin said. But he did not say much. And he did not know some of the scores, says Mr. Walker, as well as he thought he did. For composition, Walker had Rosario Scalero, who had also taught Barber.

One day, Samuel Barber returned to the school in his uniform: the uniform of the Army Air Corps. He served Wednesday tea with Mrs. Bok, the founder of the school.
Walker had an orchestration class with Gian Carlo Menotti. “It was a joke,” he says. I respond, “He didn’t give you much?” Mr. Walker says, “He didn’t give us anything.” Walker pretty much taught himself orchestration.

He is nothing if not blunt in his opinions. At one point, we’re talking about Kreisleriana, the Schumann piece. “If you listen to that pianist from South America,” he says, rubbing his eyes in disgust. The object of his disgust, he cannot remember the name of. “Martha Argerich?” I hazard. He nods his head. “Terrible,” he says. “Terrible. She has no idea about the piece at all. No sense of the rhythm, no sense of the phrasing . . .”

In 1945, Walker played Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, under Eugene Ormandy. The maestro was not very nice to very many people. “Was he nice to you?” I ask. No. Ormandy should at least get points for consistency.

Warmly supportive of young Walker was Nadia Boulanger, the famous composition teacher in France. She had taught anyone and everyone, including a slew of Americans: Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter. She taught Walker, too. “You’re a composer,” she told him — a high compliment, from that source. She confirmed for him that he was on the right track. “Just keep going,” she said.
In the middle of the century, and for a long time thereafter, there was tremendous pressure on composers to conform to a modernist fashion: a fashion epitomized by Pierre Boulez, the famous Frenchman. Did Walker ever feel such pressure? “No,” he says. “I’m an outsider. I don’t have connections to composers. Even black composers.”

I ask him who, among his colleagues, is underrated. He cannot give me an answer. I ask who is overrated. He says, emphatically, “Boulez.”

Walker had a busy career of teaching, along with composing and playing. He taught at several institutions, mainly Rutgers, in New Jersey, where he was chairman of the music department. In 1996, he wrote Lilacs, for voice and orchestra (setting Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”). It was this work that won him the Pulitzer Prize. Since its premiere, it has barely been performed at all. This is tremendously frustrating for a composer, Pulitzer or no Pulitzer.

Mr. Walker was married to a fellow pianist, Helen Walker-Hill. They had two sons, Gregory and Ian. Mr. Walker’s father kept mum about medicine. What about Mr. Walker? Was he laissez-faire with his sons? No. “I’m the micromanager!” he says. Gregory is a violinist; Ian is a playwright. Gregory is a champion of his father’s music, including a violin concerto, written for him.

In his 90-plus years, George Walker has written 90-plus works. Interesting how that has worked out. In 2008, I interviewed Elliott Carter on the occasion of his hundredth birthday. (He lived to 103.) He was diligently working. Mr. Walker, too, works. “When you’ve been doing something for so long, there’s nothing else you can think of doing,” he says.

I ask, “Are there musical ideas in your head all the time?” No, he answers. “I try not to think about music except when I sit down to compose.” That both surprises and impresses me. I think of a modern word: “compartmentalization.”

We talk about race and the impact of discrimination. Mr. Walker says that a big problem is tokenism: People perform a work by a black composer, pat themselves on the back, and think, “Well, that’s done.” Also, black pianists may well be asked to play Rhapsody in Blue — instead of a concerto by, say, Mozart. (Note that Rhapsody in Blue was composed by a Brooklyn-born son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. The family’s original name: Gershowitz.)

Mr. Walker has many gripes about the music business, as everyone does. But he has no gripes about music. He had his first piano lesson at five, 90 years ago. And he loves music as much as he ever did. “The love of music permeates me,” he says. “The love of good music.”

Is there any music he is feeling especially close to now (apart from his own)? Well, it depends on his mood, he says. Often, he will go back to some piece he has known for many years — and discover something new in it. Why didn’t I understand this initially? he’ll think. But he does now. And “my respect for great music is never-ending.”

Jay Nordlinger — Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at the National Review Institute. @jaynordlinger

http://georgetwalker.com/articles.html

George Walker

Articles

Contents:

The Audiophile Voice:

Interview with Dr. George Walker, Volume 2, no. 4

Barnes and Noble:

"Walker has honed the thorny modernist techniques of his earlier work into a style of great emotional espressivity...The masterful text-setting (Lilacs) is accompanied by imaginative, evocative orchestral writing."

Fanfare Magazine:

Walker (Peter Burwasser, July/August 1997)

HBCU College Algebra Reform Consortium

Newsletter of the HBCU College Algebra Reform Consortium, Vignette- George Walker

Library of Congress:

The Lot of the Black Composer by George Walker (Keynote address from 1992 Unisys African-American Composers Forum)
Four Poems (original) by George Walker

Musical Quarterly:

George Walker is one of the most highly regarded and successful composers of the late twentieth century. (Musical Quarterly, Fall 2000)

contents

New Music Connoisseur:

George Walker: A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

New York Times:

A wonderful birthday tribute (May 2003)
A Pulitzer Winner's Overnight Success of 60 Years (Ralph Blumenthal, April 11, 1996)
Make Room for Black Classical Music (George Walker, November 3, 1993)
A Career Composing Classical Music (Joseph Deitch, July 15, 1990)
A Composer Who Backed Into the Business (Glenn Plaskin, January 10, 1982)
A Serious Composer Talks About the Path to Success (New Jersey Section, Terri Lowen Finn, February 8, 1981)

Philadelphia Inquirer:

Yes, he's a great composer (Leslie Valdes, October 31, 1996)

Piano and Keyboard Keyboard Magazine:

Walker has made an important and rewarding contribution to the piano repertoire...
music of originality without artificiality, born of his imagination and his search for
precise expression.

contents

Positive Feedback:

A great composer who's been at his job for over fifty years.

Scarecrow Press:

The Black Composer Speaks: Interview with George Theophilus Walker (1978)

Star-Ledger:

Looking Past the Prize (Mark Adamo, January 19, 1997)
Music community says Pulitzer long overdue (Michael Redmond, April 14, 1996)

Stereophile:

The Music of George Walker (Dan Buckley, November 1997)

Washington Post:

Hometown Hommage To a D.C. Composer (Joseph McLellan, June 8, 1997)

Yahoo Biography:

His acknowledged masterpiece is for solo piano, the Sonata no. 2

contents

Home

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2015/08/20/d6e9e6c2-3beb-11e5-9c2d-ed991d848c48_story.html?utm_term=.4e0a661d1215

Music

In life’s coda, master composer George Walker has a symphony in mind

Composer George Walker, a Washington, D.C. native, who was the first black composer awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music at his home. (Frank Schramm)

by Geoff Edgers and Photography by Frank Schramm

August 22, 2015

The Washington Post

Photographer Frank Schramm had just moved to Montclair, N.J., when he heard one of Walker’s pieces playing on the local public radio station. He sent Walker an e-mail, not having any idea where he lived. Turns out, they were in the same town. Walker dropped Schramm a tape. The photographer began taking pictures. That was 2004. Schramm, who has continued photographing the composer, provided the Washington Post with these images.

Born: 1922

First piano lesson: 1927

First recital, Town Hall, New York City: 1945

First black tenured faculty member, Smith College: 1961

Music composition pages in the home of George Walker. (Frank Schramm)

First Pulitzer Prize for African-American in composition: 1996.

There are no deadlines. There is nothing to prove. George Walker, 93, writes music because he wants to. “I don’t know what relaxation is,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer admits. Walker also talks about his many chores as he sits in his living room in Montclair. Two high-end (Polymer) floor speakers stand a few feet away. The Steinway is in the next room. So are the sheets of music he’s working on and a stack of CDs. “I do everything. I do my own cooking. I do my laundry. I do my cleaning.” Oh, and that symphony. Walker has been working on it for four months. The D.C. native – he grew up in the northwest section of the city - isn’t sure who will perform it. First, Walker has to finish it. Why keep working? “I want more people to hear my work,” he says. “I want people to get acquainted with my music.”

He works most days, sitting at the piano. “I’m not like Brahms getting up at 5 o’clock and having a cup of coffee. But I’m thinking all the time about possibilities. About what I can use. And I spend very little time actually writing because I don’t like to revise. If I wrote three notes one day, the next day I might erase two and leave one. It’s very intensive, especially now. I’ve come to the point where I can find something and say, ‘Aha, I’ve already done that.’

“There’s always a possibility of finding something. It’s basically the choice that one makes. The pitch. The rhythm. It also has to do with the harmony. Trying to figure out why one particular chord sounds right and what note should change.”

Walker, 93, who was raised in Northwest Washington, has been working on a symphony for four months, writing down and erasing note after note, testing them on his Steinway piano. (Frank Schramm)

Early lessons

Miss Mary L. Henry was his first piano teacher. Walker started taking lessons at the age of 5. “The piano was in the parlor. It was an upright. Most everybody had a piano. It was simply a matter of finding a teacher to teach. She came in and once a week, I would have a lesson. When you’re a kid you have to be told that — to practice. The famous story about Stravinsky when he was composing ‘The Rite of Spring’ in the apartment and there was a kid outside shouting to him — ‘That’s wrong’ — and Stravinsky was saying, ‘No, this is right, this is right, son.’ Same thing happened to me. When I first started out, my mother would be in the kitchen and I’d be fumbling around on the piano and she would say, ‘That’s not right.’ She said, ‘Don’t do it again.’ ”

On Sherman Avenue

Walker’s father was a Jamaican immigrant who graduated from medical school at Philadelphia’s Temple University in 1918. His mother worked in the Government Printing Office after graduating from high school. “Our household was extremely busy because my father had his office downstairs. The street, Sherman Avenue, was a lovely street at the time with arching trees. That’s one of the major changes that I really feel strongly was a result of the effort to focus on business by widening the street. To allow buses to go without ever stopping. Straight down this whole avenue.”

The contemporaries

He is a tough sell. Walker has reservations about many of today’s composers. “If you don’t have a sense of formal design, if you don’t have any real sense of harmonic coordination, if you don’t even have a sense that music has to breathe, it’s going to be uncoordinated. Almost in every period you have composers who are extremely well-trained. We’re in a period where technique is not an option. It’s not taught as an option. The fact of the matter is that if one’s to go back to composers who wanted to change things and do something different and yet managed somehow to retain some of the aspects of composition that the other masters had completely absorbed. You have to go back to Stravinsky, Hindemith. I have issues with them, but they’re not the same issues that I would find with the so-called contemporary composers of the late 20th century. Elliott Carter, it was kind of pathetic what he was doing after 80 or 90 years.”

The Pulitzer

Walker’s winning piece, “Lilacs for voice and orchestra,” used the words of Walt Whitman and was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1996.

How did the Pulitzer change his life? “I got probably more publicity nationwide than perhaps any other Pulitzer Prize-
winner. But not a single orchestra approached me about doing the piece or any piece. My publisher didn’t have sense enough to push. It materialized in nothing.”

On being black

“It’s the first thing that comes to most people’s mind. That if you’re in music, you must play jazz. You don’t play jazz? I can’t believe it. It’s a stereotyping that is sort of endemic. It doesn’t bother me. I realize and I recognize this is how people think. If I were to be deterred by that, as some black performers had been — I’ve heard any number of people who have said, ‘When I started to take piano lessons, my teacher told me, “You ought to play jazz.” ’ It’s the implication there that this is something that comes more naturally to you. I think the world of classical music is really complex in the sense that you never quite know why things don’t go your way all the time. Management had arranged for me to have an audition with someone from [the Ravinia Festival]. So I played for him. He said, ‘Well, maybe we can arrange for you to play “Rhapsody In Blue.” ’

When they play it right

“I remember when I worked on ‘Dialogue for Cello and Orchestra’ with the Cleveland Orchestra. And I went to the first rehearsal and the orchestra played so wonderful I was almost overwhelmed. Sometimes, I can’t think of another occasion in which I was so moved. It sounded even better than I could have anticipated. I don’t remember the feeling. I simply remember there was a sense of amazement that I had written this piece. It’s not like anything else you’ve ever heard. And for them to have played it in a way that I really could not find anything to object to.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post's national arts reporter, covers everything from fine arts to popular culture. He's profiled David Letterman and outlaw country singer Billy Joe Shaver, and told the story of the making of Run-DMC's version of "Walk This Way." He is also the host of "Edge of Fame," a podcast co-produced by WBUR Boston.

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/george-walker-concise-and-precise/

George Walker: Concise and Precise

by Frank J. Oteri

September 1, 2017

New Music, USA

The shocking massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015 prompted composer George Walker to pay tribute to its nine victims in his latest orchestra work, Sinfonia No. 5.

“I decided I would write my own texts, a few lines given to five different speakers, and to show a photo of Charleston,” Walker explained when we visited him at his home in Montclair, New Jersey. “I had been to Charleston before the massacre, but I was uncertain that I had been in the church where the massacre occurred. I found out that I had not, but the horrific events that occurred there and elsewhere will always remain etched in my imagination.”

While it’s certainly not the first time a composer felt compelled to create music in response to a great tragedy, what makes Walker’s case much rarer is that when he completed the composition last year he was 94 years old. When we visited Juan Orrego-Salas in 2014, just a few weeks after his 95th birthday, he told us he stopped composing shortly after he turned 90, claiming that he had written all he had to write. Admittedly, there have been some significant works by nonagenarians—Havergal Brian’s last two symphonies, Jeronimas Kačinskas’s fourth string quartet, Leo Ornstein’s last two piano sonatas, and tons of pieces by Elliott Carter, who then went on to compose 18 works after his 100th birthday. But, to the best of my knowledge, Walker’s new symphonic work is the only such piece by a living composer that age. Certainly, it’s the only work by a prominent living nonagenarian whose music has been featured on dozens of recordings and who has received the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

But what perhaps makes Walker’s story even more unusual is that while he is now arguably the eldest statesman among still-active composers, he began his career as a child prodigy. He started studying the piano at the age of five, composing as a teenager, and had become something of a cause célèbre by his early 20s. He made his New York piano recital debut at Town Hall at the age of 23 in a program of mostly standard repertoire, which also featured three of his own compositions. In a review published the following morning in The New York Times, Walker was hailed as “an authentic talent of marked individuality and fine musical insight.” The following year, Walker’s still popular Lyric for String Orchestra (originally titled Lament), which he had arranged from a movement of his first string quartet written in memory of his grandmother, received its premiere in a radio broadcast conducted by his Curtis classmate and good friend Seymour Lipkin.

“Seymour had always wanted to be a conductor,” Walker remembered. “I said to him, ‘If I add a double bass to the second movement of my string quartet, would you play it?’ Just like that. … It was just right on the spot. And he said yes. So I rushed home and put the parts together and gave it to him and they played it.”

Following this initial success, Walker began a wide range of works, spanning repertoire for solo piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, chorus, and numerous songs. Throughout the ensuing seven decades, he has remained a staunch champion of traditional classical forms—to date, he was written ten sonatas, two string quartets, and formidable concertos for piano, violin, cello, and trombone. Yet his music has been hardly retrogressive. “When you can’t get beyond Sibelius, you’re an idiot!” he animatedly quipped at one point. And over the course of nearly three quarters of a century, his music grew considerably more complex, often veering toward atonality. He even briefly flirted with serialism in his 1960 solo piano composition Spatials. “I always felt that there are certain limitations to 12-tone music, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could write a short work that was strict,” he opined. “[O]ne can achieve a certain freshness within the limitations of the repetitions of the kind of sonorities that one can expect from 12-tone music, because it doesn’t go on for too long.”

If there’s any quality that distinguishes all of Walker’s music it’s its conciseness and preciseness. Maybe that’s why he has now composed five relatively brief works he has titled sinfonias and has eschewed the composition of large-scale symphonies. “Things that are overly embellished, or that are too rich, just don’t suit my temperament,” he acknowledged. “The sinfonias are all extremely concise works.… [T]he idea of conciseness as opposed to an extended work was always in my mind when writing these pieces; I thought that they also might be easy to program, which they have not been.”

There was a somewhat uncharacteristic touch of disappointment in Walker’s voice as he said this—Walker is always extremely poised and disciplined. His aesthetics remained seemingly impervious to passing trends. But he’s now 95 and has still not been able to secure a date for the premiere performance of Sinfonia No. 5. However, never one to wait for others to make things happen, Walker hired an orchestra, the Sinfonia Varsovia, and a conductor, Ian Hobson—who together have now recorded virtually all of Walker’s orchestral compositions for Albany Records—to make a studio recording of his new work so at least he can hear it. He’s hoping to release it within the year so others can listen to it as well. He played us the first proof following our lengthy discussion through a high-end audio system that takes pride of place in his living room. It is visceral music, totally appropriate given the subject matter to which he was responding. But there are also moments of tenderness and beauty. It is music that offers hope, which is extremely cathartic, even though, for Walker, beauty might be a by-product but it is not an explicit goal.

“I don’t think in terms of creating beauty,” Walker pointed out. “If the effect is such that people get a sense that this is beautiful, that’s fine. But they’re missing so much. I want to create elegant structures.”

George Walker in conversation with Frank J. Oteri
Recorded in Walker’s home in Montclair, New Jersey
August 18, 2017—11:30 a.m.
Video presentations by Molly Sheridan

launch gallery

Photography by Molly Sheridan and Frank Schramm (where noted)

Plus historic photos, courtesy of George Walker, which also appear in George Walker’s autobiography

George Walker: Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist

Conversation transcribed by Julia Lu

Frank J. Oteri: In an interview with Thomas May that was published in Strings magazine at the end of June, you mentioned that you began composing just to release energy after long hours of practicing the piano. It’s pretty amazing to me that some of the first fruits of that part-time release of energy were your gorgeous Prelude and Caprice for piano. But it’s more amazing to me that you almost didn’t become a composer. We’re very lucky that you did.

George Walker: Yes, it’s rather astonishing. One of my reasons for being in college was to have the opportunity of playing on the tennis team, which I had done and given up; I played freshman tennis. In my autobiography I mentioned that I met another freshman in my first year at the Oberlin Conservatory; his name was Bob Crane. I asked Bob, “What’s your major?” And he said composition.

George Walker's photo and a quote about him that appeared in the 1937 Yearbook of Dunbar High School in Washington. D.C.

From the 1937 Yearbook of Dunbar High School in
Washington. D.C.

I’d never heard of anyone majoring in composition. My limited background had been associating with persons who were interested in learning how to play the piano. And in Washington, D.C., where I grew up, I had two close friends who studied the violin. But not composition. So then I asked him, “What are you writing?” And he said a fandango. I’d never heard of a fandango before. I had a strong background with French and Latin, so I knew it wasn’t French and I knew it wasn’t Latin. It sounded Spanish.

“I’d never heard of anyone majoring in composition.”

Then in my junior year at Oberlin, I had been fortunate in obtaining the very first job I ever had in my life. I had become the organist for the Oberlin Theological Seminary. When I came to Oberlin, I had not ever played the organ. My first organ teacher was Arthur Crowley. He sensed that I could be an organist and I played in an organ recital in my very first year. Then I studied with Arthur Poister, who had played from memory all the works of Bach. So I got to know many of the great Bach works; I had a great respect for Bach. And I played a work of Leo Sowerby from memory on a month’s notice, the Passacaglia from his symphony. As the organist for the Oberlin Theological Seminary, I had access to the organ at any time of the day, particularly at night. I would go almost every night and improvise on the organ, like Bach. I had a morning service five days a week in which I would play hymns. And at the end of each service, I would improvise something.

FJO: Did you write any of those down?

GW: I never wrote down anything. The improvisation was my earliest attempt at exploring harmonic developments that were unusual to conclude. In my music, I think in almost every piece, there’s a different type of cadence. So there’s a carryover from that.

FJO: Another thing you said in that interview with Thomas May was that you thought that studying composition would make you a better pianist. But I think, in fact, what happened was that playing the piano and also playing the organ early on made you a better composer. It made you write idiomatically for instruments and to be sensitive, and, because the organ literature is so filled with counterpoint, it inspired you to create music that is filled with inner voices.

GW: But then I decided that I was going to discontinue my organ studies because I had been chosen to play Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestra, and I wanted to concentrate on my senior recital. So in making the decision to discontinue with the organ, I thought I’d try one semester of composition to see what it’s like. So the very first semester of my senior year, I took composition with Normand Lockwood, who was the composition teacher there. In that one semester I was introduced to some songs of Charles Ives and, not to Le Sacre du Printemps by Stravinsky, but to his Symphony of Psalms. The semester was spent essentially going from writing a single vocal line to writing a line with accompaniment, then finding a text and setting that text. The song that I set to the text of Paul Lawrence Dunbar [“Response”] emanates from that.

FJO: It’s that early?

GW: That early.

FJO: It’s a beautiful song.

George Walker at a piano pensively studying a score
in 1941

GW: Shortly after that, after I discontinued my lessons, I wrote the Caprice. The Prelude and Caprice are linked together, but the Prelude was written for my New York debut; the Caprice was the first work I ever wrote for piano. Then when I went to Curtis, I wanted to be able to spend five hours a day practicing the piano. At Oberlin, I was involved in so many more things, just even going from building to building and looking for a piano to practice on. But the classes at Curtis were less significant in terms of what one was expected to do for them and in them. I had a lesson a week with [Rudolf] Serkin, then I’d go back home and practice. I found myself walking almost a mile to the library to listen to recordings at night, but still I had a lot of energy. Then one day I encountered one of the students at Curtis and in the conversation I found out that he was studying composition with Rosario Scalero. I asked him what he was writing, and he said he was doing counterpoint. I had had four years of counterpoint at Oberlin along with fugue and canon, so I thought, “Well, if that’s all he’s doing, I can do that!” I spoke to [the registrar] Jane Hill, who scheduled everything, and I asked her if it would be possible for me to submit something to Scalero to be considered to be a student of his, even though he’d already selected his students for that year. And she said she would be willing to do it. So the two pieces that I submitted were “Response” and the Caprice.

The program for George Walker's debut piano recital at New York's Town Hall: J.S. Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor from WTC Bk II; Beethoven's Sonata opus 101; Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana; (intermission); three pieces by Walker (receiving their world premiere performances); Chopin's Barcarolle plus four etudes (C-sharp minor, G-flat major, G-flat minor, and B minorf); and Prokofieff's Toccata, opus 11.

The program for George Walker’s debut piano recital
at New York’s Town Hall on November 13,1945

included the world premiere performances of
three short original compositions by Walker.

FJO: To go back even earlier than when you were at Oberlin, to be so immersed in the sound world of classical music growing up in D.C. was very unusual. Although recordings were starting to become available of some of the standard repertoire, they still weren’t very common. So I’m curious about how you came to know and love this music. I know there was a piano in your home growing up.

GW: Music came into my life from what my mother had. The books that she had acquired and I assume that she must have bought when she was in high school or after she was in high school. She bought the piano that I first started to bang on. My first teacher, when I started out, had me playing things out of [John] Thompson, but there was a certain curiosity I suppose for me when I learned that I could read music. When I found that I could do that, I started to explore and I went through everything that mother had acquired. I would ask her when she would go downtown to do shopping to look for certain things, and she would go to the music store and bring them back.

FJO: So maybe you’d play one piece by a composer and then you would want to play the others. When did you start making those associations?

GW: For some reason, I think I had a sort of innate taste for what I liked, and I chose what I liked. Schirmer Music, for example, used to have several excerpts of works printed on the back of sheet music that you would buy. I would play through those and I’d say to myself, “I like this.” I think I developed a sense of discrimination quite early about what I liked and what I didn’t think was worth anything.

FJO: What would be an example of that?

GW: Well, when I started with my second piano teacher, I was introduced to a lot of what was considered contemporary music like Cyril Scott, [Selim] Palmgren, [Edvard] Grieg, and [Erno] Dohnányi. Cyril Scott with those luscious chords was too luscious for me.

FJO: Why were they too luscious?

GW: I don’t know whether there’s something innate that relates to my father, who was very direct, almost taciturn, very precise. But things that are overly embellished, or that are too rich, just don’t suit my temperament.

FJO: Interesting. It’s also interesting that your parents were always fine about you becoming a musician. They were both completely supportive.

“Things that are overly embellished, or that are too rich, just don’t suit my temperament.”

GW: They never said anything to the contrary.

FJO: And your father was a doctor.

GW: Yes.

FJO: He didn’t want you to become a doctor?

GW: My father never broached the idea of my taking over his office, which was downstairs, or even taking courses that would lead to a medical degree. I knew his friends. I was very fond of his friends— physicians, dentists, West Indians. There was something so remarkable about my father.

FJO: You were also very close to your grandmother.

GW: Yes.

FJO: Her death prompted you to write the work that became your first huge success as a composer, the gorgeous Lyric for Strings, which is a string orchestra arrangement of one of the movements from your first string quartet. I’m curious how that piece came about.

GW: I had been fortunate in being given a Town Hall recital by Efrem Zimbalist. After that recital, which was very successful, I played the Third Piano Concerto of Rachmaninoff with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and that was very successful. I had graduated from Curtis, and since I was living in Philadelphia, I asked at Curtis if I could continue to study with Rosario Scalero. I still had the use of my piano, which was loaned from Curtis, but I didn’t want to study with Serkin; I didn’t want to study the piano. I had obtained the diploma in piano and composition, so this was a rather unusual request, but they were so nice. When they agreed to the idea, I had already decided that I would like to write a string quartet. This came about, I think, in part because the summer after my first year at Curtis, my mother insisted that although I was at Curtis, and although it’s a very prestigious institution, I should have a master’s degree, which I would not be getting from Curtis. So I went [back] to Oberlin in the summer to begin work on a master’s degree, and I met a person with whom I was supposed to be studying composition, Ludwig Lenel. He was actually the godson of the great German organist and musicologist Albert Schweitzer. I had been introduced to Lenel by my teacher Arthur Poister when he first came over from Germany because Poister wanted me to show Lenel how the organ in our chapel worked. He was a composer of sorts, so I was going to take composition along with piano towards a master’s degree. It was not a very happy choice. But in talking with him about composition, he brought up the Ravel String Quartet. I knew the Debussy String Quartet. I listened to the Ravel and I never heard the use of so many things in that work before. It fascinated me. I didn’t want to write like Ravel and I didn’t want to write like Debussy, but the medium [then] fascinated me more so than writing any other work. My graduation piece for my diploma in composition was a violin sonata.

FJO: That’s a work you no longer acknowledge.

GW: That’s correct. I thought there was a little taste of Brahms in there, which I didn’t want to expose.

A score for a later Sonata for Violin and Piano,
which George Walker still acknowledges, sits
on his piano.

FJO: Did you destroy the piece, or did you save it?

GW: I never saved it. It was performed, and it was reviewed very well. Scalero liked it. Scalero suggested I send it to the Bearns Prize at Columbia University; he liked it that much. It was the only time anybody at Curtis had ever suggested that I submit anything for an award. But I didn’t feel that it had enough of an individualist quality to it, so I didn’t keep it. I didn’t know what I could do after that, so I concentrated on the string quartet.

FJO: And as you were writing it, your grandmother with whom you were very close, died.

GW: When she passed, it was like a realization that our family was crumbling. She and my mother were like sisters. Without my grandmother, my mother had no one to talk to. My father was not a very talkative person, and he was in and out of the house. He had patients. He was downstairs in the basement, or he was out doing this or that. My grandmother lived in our house. She was in her late ’80s or early ‘90s. When we were going off to school in the morning at eight o’clock, she was downstairs sitting down and having breakfast with us every morning. And every morning, she was in the kitchen helping my mother peel potatoes or apples. Many times she was washing dishes, and I was wiping dishes for her. Yet she never went out of the house. For someone to have endured what she had to have endured, not to have even talked about it, and yet, when I would say Toscanini is on in ten minutes, she and my mother would come into the library and listen.

FJO: So it’s so fitting that you memorialized her by taking a movement from your string quartet and arranging it for string orchestra and that it actually received its premiere on the radio. She would have loved the music that you wrote.

GW: Yes.

FJO: But how did it wind up getting premiered on the radio?

GW: I was in the so-called Common Room at Curtis and I saw Seymour Lipkin. We were very close friends—Seymour and I began to study with Serkin at the same time. After my audition to enter Curtis, my father had met me at Penn Station, taken a cab, and he waited for me until after the audition. I’ll never forget, it was raining just like today, and my father had his rubbers wrapped up in a newspaper, and we were about to leave. Just as we got to the door, we were called back by the registrar and asked to go upstairs. We went upstairs and were ushered into a room, and there the secretary Mr. Mathis said, “We want to tell you that you’ve been accepted.” And in two minutes, in comes Seymour and they tell him the same thing. He had been a student at Curtis, but it has always been a rule that when your teacher leaves for any reason at all, his students are out. So Seymour had to audition again and Serkin had taken him.

Anyway, in the Common Room Seymour tells me, “I’m conducting these concerts on the radio with a string orchestra.” It turned out to be some concerts sponsored by a bank. Seymour had always wanted to be a conductor. And I said to him, “If I add a double bass to the second movement of my string quartet, would you play it?” Just like that. I’d never spoken to anybody about that. Of course I knew Barber had done that, but I never talked about it in front of anybody else. It was just right on the spot. And he said yes. So I rushed home and put the parts together and gave it to him and they played it. It was called Lament because of my grandmother.

FJO: What made you change the name from Lament to Lyric?

GW: Because I knew there was a work of Howard Hanson called Lament for Beowulf So when the conductor at the Mellon Art Gallery, Richard Bales, chose to do it on a program, I changed it to Adagio, and he played it, and it was reviewed as Adagio. But that was too close to the Barber so I decided against retaining that title.

FJO: But there are loads of Adagios and there are also loads of Laments. In fact, you wrote a gorgeous art song called “Lament.”

GW: That was the title of a Countee Cullen poem I found after I moved to New Jersey. I came here in ’69. I don’t remember how I got that volume of poems; it must have been from the ’70s, but I have it here.

Outside George Walker's house in Montclair, New Jersey.

The house in Montclair, New Jersey, where
George Walker has lived since 1969
(photo by Frank Schramm).

FJO: There’s a comment you made about writing music in your autobiography that I’d like to talk more about with you. You wrote that writing music is not so much about inspiration as it is about the force of will.

GW: Yes, I had to make up my mind about what I wanted to do because I realized that for me, the beginning is so important. The beginning consists of finding the right notes and finding the right rhythm, then trying to determine what the character of that beginning is and how it will progress. I can’t say that I can translate anything that I see or read or hear into that without trying to script what will fit satisfactorily in a way that will give me the confidence to continue.

FJO: You also said recently to somebody that when you compose music, that’s the time that the ideas come—the notes, the rhythms, and everything. If you’re not working on a specific piece of music, you don’t necessarily have music running through your head.

GW: Things change. I find right now with my obsession with the Sinfonia No. 5 that I’m constantly rethinking what I have done and trying to find alternatives that I could have chosen. It’s become almost a bit annoying that I just can’t completely put it aside. But I think that has been an unusual type of diversion from the way I normally work. In the past, I’ve always avoided trying to keep ideas in my head.

FJO: Just for the sheer practicality of wanting to move on to the next piece after you finish writing something?

GW: Yes.

FJO: But what you say about force of will rather than inspiration and being able to compartmentalize when you create a musical idea is very contrary to the myth that many people believe about composing music. You must have this tune in your head that you have to get out. And you rush home to a piece of paper or you write it in the back of a car. For you, it’s always been much more systematic. You compose only during certain hours in the day. Maybe this came about because you began composing after hours of practice, and you had to have specific time set aside for composing.

GW: Well, I do have ideas that come to me. Sometimes I feel lazy if I don’t find a piece of paper and a pencil and put them down, but it doesn’t mean—and I have tried this—that they turn out to be significant. And I don’t actually work every day by any means. Sometimes I don’t work over a period of time. I only jot down a few notes at a time. But what I do find is that I can come back and pick up where I left off. There is continuity despite the discontinuity in terms of time. I’m not at a loss when I sit down and find that after six notes, I don’t know where I am.

George Walker's hand holding a pencil and writing on a page of music notation paper.

George Walker writing music
(photo by Frank Schramm).

“I can come back and pick up where I left off. There is continuity despite the discontinuity in terms of time.”

FJO: What’s so interesting about the whole inspiration question and the myth of inspiration is that it also ties into the belief in how something beautiful is created, as well as the whole notion of what beauty is. I think of pieces like the First String Quartet and the Lyric, but also the Cello Sonata and the Trombone Concerto. To my ears, these are all extremely beautiful pieces. But you probably didn’t start out having a specific melody in your head for any of them. These beautiful melodies emerged from what you were putting together when you came up with the structure for these pieces.

GW: Yes. And, as a matter fact, I don’t think in terms of creating beauty. I can understand how people may get a little annoyed about the fact that I seem to be more concerned about things like the technical aspect of composition, but I think that is what enables me to find the things that somehow manage to become a part of the fabric that people recognize. As I look back, I think about so many things in almost every work that people do not notice that are very important. For example, in the Trombone Concerto, there’s a consistent dissonance in the first moment, but people aren’t affected by that dissonance. And when the trombone melody comes in, the melodic aspects are so unconventional; I’m using nine or ten different notes in that melody. That’s the same with the Passacaglia of my Address for orchestra. The great C minor Passacaglia for organ by Bach is so conventional in its use of tonic relationships. When you have something that’s literally modulating and comes back, to be able to do something like that is, to me, more interesting as a composer. If the effect is such that people get a sense that this is beautiful, that’s fine. I want to create elegant structures.

FJO: So listeners being able to discern this level of detail is important to you.

GW: It is very important.

“I don’t think in terms of creating beauty… but if the effect is such that people get a sense that this is beautiful, that’s fine.”

FJO: But a lot of people who listen to music, especially now and even among people who love this music, don’t necessarily have the training to recognize this level of detail.

GW: That’s right.

FJO: There are also a lot of people who don’t know about this music or don’t listen to it because they feel that they don’t have the training to appreciate it. We’re losing a lot of potential listeners who might love your music, if only they heard it.

GW: Yes. I do feel that at this point it’s wonderful that people should have the opportunity to hear the music whether it’s on YouTube or the radio or whatever, just to hear it whatever way they can. I don’t like the idea of people not paying for music, but I’m more than resigned to it at this point because it’s the only way. I feel great satisfaction to know that it’s possible for them to hear it.

FJO: But if they’re not noticing the details you wish they could comprehend, what can we do to have people hear it in a deeper way for you? What would be an ideal listening experience for somebody listening to your music?

GW: I think the only ideal situation is just listening to it more than once.

FJO: Repeated listening is very important.

GW: Yes.

FJO: You mentioned Address, which is a phenomenal orchestra piece and it was a huge success when it was finally performed, nearly a decade after it was written. It took a long time for the whole piece to be performed. That piece was completed around the time of your studies with Nadia Boulanger. So many very different composers studied with Boulanger. Some of them credit her with improving their contrapuntal skills, but this was already a key feature in your music from your years of studying organ music and studying counterpoint. Others say they learned all these interesting chords, but you mentioned that you were not interested in luscious chords. Still others claimed that she helped them to find their own voice. You already wrestled with this issue when you discarded your early violin sonata. So what did Nadia Boulanger give to you as a teacher?

GW: From the outset, Nadia Boulanger, in the very first lesson said, “You’re a composer.” She said, “Your music has power.” The other composers—Carter and Piston and all of them—were green about counterpoint and doing harmony. I didn’t have to do that. I just brought in whatever I wanted to and showed it to her. She had nothing to say except, “Keep going.” But it was she who arranged for me to play my First Piano Sonata in Paris. And she arranged for me to play it in Fontainebleau after she’d given me a scholarship. She arranged to send the First Sonata to the Lili Boulanger Competition. She paid to send it herself directly to Piston. She wrote a letter of recommendation for a second year of study, which was turned down by the USIS. The recommendation meant nothing to them. She did everything she could for me.

FJO: So, even if you already knew the direction you wanted to take as a composer, she was an important mentor for you.

GW: Yes. She had the realization that I was capable from my first song. I didn’t show her any big works. She never saw my Trombone Concerto. The first things that I showed her were my songs. I showed her “A Bereaved Maid” and she said that’s a masterpiece. She saw the two piano sonatas. That was enough.

A handwritten letter to George Walker from Nadia Boulanger.

A letter to George Walker from Nadia Boulanger,
written on September 29, 1958.

FJO: There was an evolution happening in your music that had already started before your studies with her; it almost seems like those studies were a detour and that your music ultimately went in a direction that had nothing to do with her. Your music in the 1950s was getting more and more chromatic.

GW: Well, something that was pointed out to me is the Lyric is not necessarily a simple piece. It alternates between major and modal. In touching upon modes, it became chromatic. But the chromaticism comes about from my interest in expanding the harmonic vocabulary to include dissonance as a part of the harmonic palette, not in dissonance that is totally disconnected from something. One of the extraordinary things about Mozart was the way that he could move from the diatonic into the chromatic and back again. You don’t have that in Beethoven.

“Chromaticism comes about from my interest in expanding the harmonic vocabulary.”

FJO: There’s an anecdote you tell in your autobiography, from before you were studying with Boulanger and were pursuing a D.M.A. at the Eastman School, about buying a used LP recording of the Berg Violin Concerto. That was your introduction to 12-tone music.

GW: I had actually discovered this second hand recording of the Berg. It was not a very good recording. [Eastman’s director] Howard Hanson had an absolute disdain and dislike for 12-tone music. So at Eastman, no one was writing 12-tone music, except this one poor fellow who was dismissed.

FJO: He was dismissed for writing 12-tone music?

GW: Every year they would have this series of readings with Hanson. And this one student composer had a piece. Hanson had a stack of pieces and when he would finish a piece, he would put the score on the stack and turn around, call the composer, and so on. But when he finished the piece of this student composer, he just put it on the stack and never bothered to call him over.

FJO: So you were very brave to want to want to go in this direction as composer. [They both laugh.] So when did you first have the idea of using a tone row in your music?

GW: In 1960. I always felt that there are certain limitations to 12-tone music, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could write a short work that was strict, because by that time, composers had started to realize they can’t be too strict about it and started letting in things they liked over something that really doesn’t sound so good. So I wrote Spatials. It’s a work that is in variation form and is strict—and is short, which I thought would make it something that would enable one to understand that one can achieve a certain freshness within the limitations of the repetitions of the kind of sonorities that one can expect from 12-tone music, because it doesn’t go on for too long.

“There are certain limitations to 12-tone music.”

FJO: So that’s the only piece of yours that’s really strictly 12-tone.

GW: Yes.

FJO: But, to my ear, 12-tone techniques seem to also inform the Second String Quartet. Is that true?

GW: No. The first movement of the Second String Quartet is intended to be a kind of singular, lyrical expression of each instrument, with a certain freedom so that it may sound as if it has some relationship to something you might find in Carter, but I was not thinking in terms of 12-tone.

FJO: I was curious because it sounds—to me at least—like it had a 12-tone underpinning, but then you somehow subverted it, especially in the last movement, which is this wonderful fugue. All of a sudden these atonal lines start moving in a completely strict fugal motion, which is a tonal idea. So I imagined that you somehow created this wonderful synthesis between the 12-tone method and tonal construction, which seemed like the ultimate homage to having listened to the Berg Violin Concerto, because in that piece Berg was also attempting a reconciliation of the 12-tone system with Baroque counterpoint, as well as a very lush late-19th century Romantic sound world.

GW: What I have done, and this is one of the aspects of form that I was alluding to, is to use a fugue where there are modulatory aspects to the subject and the answer. I take what is a part of a sonata form and put in some new material. So you have something that is linear and something harmonic that is not related to the fugal material, and then it comes back to the fugal material. So there is this alternation between different formal period types.

FJO: Despite being so interested in chromaticism, you have remained very dedicated to using the quintessential compositional structure for exploring diatonic tonality—the sonata form. You’ve written five piano sonatas as well as two violin sonatas, a cello sonata, and a viola sonata, plus concertos for trombone, violin, cello, and piano. You’re clearly very committed to these classical 18th-century forms.

GW: Well it’s because there’s a solidity there that one can come back to and find things, time after time, that are interesting. One hates to think in terms of just Western civilization, but this accumulation of techniques has not only been discovered, but has been found to work so well. One should attempt to find a way to continue with it rather than to throw everything out and say, “Let’s start over again.” With what? It’s going back to attempting to create a wheel that already exists. You don’t know how to put the spokes in the wheel. Although so much has been done, it seems to me that there’s still the possibility that one can find ways of extending what has already been done. It’s not the end, like Scalero thinking, “Oh, we’ve come to Sibelius; that’s the end.” That’s absolute nonsense. When you can’t get beyond Sibelius, you’re an idiot! I don’t care. There are wonderful things in the [Sibelius] Fourth Symphony; it happens to be my favorite, but please don’t disregard all the other works. You can’t listen to Stravinsky? You can’t listen to Gershwin? Oh, please.

“When you can’t get beyond Sibelius, you’re an idiot!”

FJO: Yet, one of the things I find interesting about your catalog of compositions is that you have now written five pieces that you’ve given the title Sinfonia; you seem to rather purposefully avoid using the English translation of that Italian word, symphony.

GW: I thought by calling these works sinfonias that I would focus on the fact that these were not works in or were an extension of the romantic tradition, large-scale works. They are quite the opposite. The sinfonias are all extremely concise works. The first one, which unfortunately has never had a professional performance after it was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation, is only two movements. I cannot understand why it has not been programmed. But the idea of conciseness as opposed to an extended work was always in my mind when writing these pieces; I thought that they also might be easy to program, which they have not been.

FJO: Address, which has so rarely been performed in its entirety, even though it only lasts about 20 minutes, is longer than any of your sinfonias.

GW: Exactly. Right. Address is a more conventional three-movement work. It’s actually connected to Lilacs. The second movement of the Address is a kind of elegy that is related to Gettysburg.

FJO: I didn’t know that, although of course, I knew that Lilacs was based on Walt Whitman’s famous poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” which was written to eulogize Abraham Lincoln shortly after his assassination toward the end of the Civil War. Frighteningly, the deep-seated animosities of that era seem very current once again these days, especially in the wake of the recent tragedy in Charlottesville. It struck me when I learned that your Sinfonia No. 5 was inspired by the horrible massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015 that, sadly, it’s an extremely timely piece of music.

GW: This score is just like most of my scores. I don’t start out with an idea or even with a title until I get into the work. It was only after I had started the work that it occurred to me that here is an opportunity to introduce something [about this]. I decided I would write my own texts, a few lines given to five different speakers, and to show a photo of Charleston. This was a port where slaves were often brought. I had been to Charleston before the massacre, but I was uncertain that I had been in the church where the massacre occurred. I found out that I had not, but the horrific events that occurred there and elsewhere will always remain etched in my imagination. I have not witnessed them, but there is this reference in the music.

“I don’t start out with an idea or even with a title until I get into the work.”

FJO: It seems that one of the only ways we can overcome these horrific events is to increase people’s awareness of them, and that is something that artists—poets, novelists, filmmakers, choreographers, painters, sculptors, composers—can perhaps do in ways that can make very specific tragedies somehow more universally resonant. An effective artistic statement created in response to such a horrible event can have the power to make people think and question and hopefully not repeat these events in history.

GW: Well, the unfortunate thing is that you have these marketing people for the orchestras who don’t understand the importance. And you have these artistic administrators who don’t understand that this is a timely thing. They’re only interested, of course, in filling seats and the best way to do it is to get something that has some immediate popular appeal. They don’t want this kind of thing on their programs. They don’t want it. I’ve been trying to get orchestras to do it. They won’t do it.

FJO: I read somewhere that it’s going to be performed by the National Symphony.

GW: In two years. They had a chance to do it next season; they won’t do it. I don’t have even a specific date. They won’t do it here in New Jersey. They won’t do it in Philadelphia. They won’t do it in Austin.

FJO: It should be done during Spoleto, in Charleston.

GW: Yeah, but they don’t have an orchestra that’s good enough. I’ve been trying for two years just to get someone to put it in a slot. One likes to think that artists can change things. Well, come on. We can’t change things. Look. I’ve been trying to change things. My piece Canvas was trying to change things, but I got one performance after the premiere of Canvas.

FJO: And Canvas is a piece for wind band. Wind band pieces usually get picked up by groups all over the country.

GW: Exactly. Yes.

FJO: But it has not been?

GW: It has not been.

George Walker running down a narrow hallway

George Walker has long continued along his own

path and he remains determined despite whatever

challenges attempt to impede him. Here he is

running through a corridor at Carnegie Hall to

a meeting with conductor Simon Rattle in the

Maestro’s Suite in November 2015

(photo by Frank Schramm).

FJO: At least Lilacs has now been done quite a few times. And there are now two recordings of it.

GW: Yes, but still, initially Lilacs was not done at all except for a performance out in California by a community orchestra. Then, when they wanted to do one movement of Address in Atlanta, I said no, so then they decided to do Lilacs. Then there was a conductor, William Houston, who was on the faculty at William Paterson College here in New Jersey who had just been obsessed with the idea of doing Lilacs, so he did Lilacs there. And about three months ago, it was done again in California. There haven’t been that many performances of Lilacs at all.

FJO: The fact that the vocal part could be sung either by a soprano or a tenor actually increases the possibilities for doing it.

GW: Absolutely.

FJO: And, of course the text for it is one of the great American poems and it has been set by several composers who’ve used it as a eulogy for many people besides Lincoln. When FDR died at the end of World War II, Hindemith set this poem for chorus and orchestra to memorialize him as well as all the people who died in the war. And Roger Sessions’s setting of it was dedicated to the memory of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Your setting of it is much more compact than either of these and it is more intimate as well—there’s just one singer instead of a full chorus. I guess this also goes to what you were saying about wanting to be concise and precise. You also used only four of the poem’s thirteen stanzas, so it’s much shorter than the Hindemith and Sessions settings.

“The repertoire for single voice and orchestra is extremely limited.”

GW: It had to do with the commission and the fact that it was written to honor Roland Hayes, a singer who had achieved international recognition eventually for his incorporation of spirituals in classical musical programs. So there was never any question of using a chorus. But I was extremely happy to be able to compose a work for voice and orchestra because the repertoire for single voice and orchestra is extremely limited. You have the Last Songs of Strauss and the Barber Knoxville [Summer of 1915]. I’d like it to be part of that repertoire.

Historic photo of soprano Faye Robinson, George Walker, and conductor Seiji Ozawa with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on the stage of Orchestra Hall in Boston in 1996.

George Walker takes a bow with soprano Faye Robinson
(left), conductor Seiji Ozawa (right) and the members
of the Boston Symphony Orchestra following the
world premiere performance of Lilacs on February 1,
1996. A mere two months later, the work was awarded
the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Music. [Note: According to
George Walker’s autobiography, since Lilacs was
commissioned to honor the celebrated black tenor
Roland Hayes (1887-1977), it was originally supposed
to be sung by tenor. But the tenor that Ozawa chose
for the solo part, Vinson Cole, was unable to sing it
and, with Walker’s permission, a soprano, Faye
Robinson, was chosen to sing the premiere.
So now the work can be performed by a soprano
or tenor.}

FJO: My favorite moment in Lilacs is probably in the last movement where you have this very detailed orchestra sonority of flutes, woodblock, and pizzicato strings accompanying the line “Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird.” It’s wonderfully evocative.

GW: Yes, and that’s where the spiritual comes in. I was very happy to be able to incorporate that.

FJO: You spoke before about people not hearing all the details in your music. But if people would listen to your pieces many times, they’d be more able to hear some of these subtle details. When I was listening again to your Violin Concerto earlier this week, I was suddenly riveted at the end of the second movement by one single harpsichord chord. It’s the only time you can hear the harpsichord in the whole piece. It’s just there as a punctuation, but it’s very effective once you know it’s there. That’s another very precise orchestration detail.

GW: That’s right. And in Lilacs, there’s something that is not heard. It’s so irritating. At the very end in the score, there’s a maraca. I’ve told conductors to get them to play it louder, and the conductor will say, “Well, I hear it.” Well, you may hear it, but I don’t hear it. And it’s not on the recording. Somehow you have to deal with these people who don’t want to take the time to make certain things come out. That’s very significant, the maracas at the end.

FJO: Being so committed to this level of detail and not getting it can be very frustrating.

George Walker sitting in the audience of a concert hall with a score of one of his orchestral compositions.

George Walker, like all composers who write for the
orchestra, sits in the audience during a rehearsal of
his music, studying his score and patiently waiting
to offer comments to the conductor
(photo by Frank Schramm).

GW: It’s frustrating because there’s no way even to irritate them. It’s all over. People like to think you’re collaborating with the conductor. You’re not collaborating. He’s standing up there. And you go up and you say, “Please can you ask them to play it louder.” “Yeah, O.K. Play it louder.” But when I come back up and say, “I didn’t hear it.” “Well, I heard it.” Well, what can you do? The session is over. Then you have these compromises where they don’t want to hire someone to play the one chord in the harpsichord, because they have someone who’s playing the piano. But he can’t get over to the harpsichord in time.

FJO: I guess that’s an argument for writing more chamber music because with chamber music, you can usually get what you want.

GW: Yes.

FJO: We talked a bit about your string quartets, which are extremely detailed. I’d like to talk a bit more about your many songs for solo voice and piano, which you have written throughout your life. It’s an extremely intimate combination, but you can do so much with it. And you do. Your text setting is very effective and you’ve set some really great poems—Emily Dickinson, a setting of a poem by Thomas Wyatt that I think is wonderfully eerie and powerful, your early Paul Laurence Dunbar setting we talked about, and—one of my favorites—that “Lament” by Countee Cullen that you said you set after getting a book of his poems in the 1970s. So when you’re reading, does that move you to hear music in your head for certain poems? How do you choose a text that you set to music?

GW: It depends on the subject matter, but also upon the rhythm of the verse and the consistency of the meaning in the text. I have a feeling for the vowels in the words and I can extend them, maybe use a melisma and somehow make that poem more enticing. It’s not just a literal repetition of the words; somehow it has an aura. It’s a combination that I feel is associated with the idea of lieder where you have equal parts. The accompaniment is as important as the vocal line.

FJO: Considering how sensitive your text setting is, both in all of your songs and in Lilacs, it’s a shame that you never wrote an opera.

GW: I had an opera course with Menotti, and I was an opera coach at Eastman. Even with my background, I don’t know that I could manage it. To a certain extent, I realize that my independence is a deficit; I just cannot collaborate with people. I know what composers have had to go through with collaboration. I have a friend who told me all the problems he has had composing an opera. And I could never really decide on the subject I wanted to choose. I’ve turned down subjects offered to me. So it’s not likely I’m going to tackle one.

“I realize that my independence is a deficit; I just cannot collaborate with people.”

FJO: So what are you working on now?

GW: Nothing right now. I’m really just essentially trying to get a recording out.

FJO: Of the Sinfonia No. 5? There’s a studio recording of it?

GW: I have a first proof. You want to hear it?

FJO: Yes, I’d love to listen to it when we finish talking. This is very exciting. Even if a live performance has not been scheduled until 2018, people will still be able to hear this piece on a recording. And it’s a piece that you just completed last year at the age of 94. This is very rare. There have been only a handful of people who have composed music past the age of 90. Leo Ornstein wrote two piano sonatas. The British composer Havergal Brian was writing music in his 90s. And Elliot Carter was still composing at the age of 103. You still seem to be at the height of your powers as a composer. Your Sinfonia No. 4, which you wrote at the age of 89, is extraordinary. I can’t say anything conclusive about the Fifth Sinfonia until after I’ve heard it, but from just peering through the score you showed me before we started this conversation, it seems like you’re still searching, you’re still wanting to grow and expand, which I think is very inspiring to all composers.

GW: Yes, I just don’t want to repeat myself. That has always been in the back of my mind. Having somehow found things that I think have a certain individuality, I want to find a way to twist and turn them so that they don’t sound as if they’re something that I’ve used before. That is an aspect of the conversation that I think all composers are faced with after a while. People say, “If only Mozart would have lived and kept on writing.” But his style would not have changed that much.

The high-end audio speakers in George Walker's living room.

After we finished talking, George Walker played for
us a rough edit of the in-process recording of his
Sinfonia No. 5. It was a visceral sonic experience.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121347117

Music Articles

Composer George Walker Writes For His Son

5:15

AUDIO: <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/121347117/121353678" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>

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Transcript

December 11, 2009

Heard on All Things Considered

by Joel Rose

Gregory Walker premiered his father's newest work on Thursday night with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Hear the music

Composer George Walker Writes For His Son

Hear The Music

George Walker is insisting that his son,
Gregory Walker, play a new violin concerto
he's written. Courtesy of the artist

George Walker has helped blaze a trail for African-American classical composers. His music has been performed by many of this country's top orchestras — he's got more than 80 commissions and a Pulitzer Prize to his name. Yet only now — at the age of 87 — has George Walker written a work for his son. Violinist Gregory Walker didn't even know about it until the finished score showed up in the mail.

"Didn't know about it until it was too late," the younger Walker deadpans. "He maintained the element of surprise. And I think, along with that, you're able to maintain an element of artistic control. And he's an expert at that."

George Walker doesn't entirely deny the jab about "artistic control," but the composer says he knew his son was up to the task.

"It's not a long work. But it's a very intense, difficult and challenging work for both the soloists, and the orchestra," says George Walker.

A Long Career Marked By Challenges And Firsts

George Walker has been writing intense, sometimes difficult music for more than 50 years. Walker was born in Washington, D.C. He was the first black pianist to give a recital at Town Hall in New York City in 1945. Walker studied composition with two of the best: Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. But success as a composer didn't come easily.

"I had to find my own way," says George Walker. "A way of doing something that was different; something that I would be satisfied with."

Walker's patience was rewarded in 1996, when he became the first black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for the piece Lilacs.

Even Gregory Walker admits it took him a while to understand his father's music.

"I just was weaned with his particular approach to the art from time when I didn't understand what he was going for, when it was just as abstract to me as it can be for other lay listeners," says the younger musician. "But in time — with different kinds of exposure — I've really learned to embrace and hopefully communicate what he has in mind."

Though none were written with him in mind, Gregory Walker has made a specialty out of playing his father's previous compositions — they've even recorded together.

The Premiere That Almost Wasn't

The younger Walker is also the concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra in Colorado. When George Walker sat down to write his new Violin Concerto, he knew he wanted his son to give the world premiere.

"I wanted him to have the opportunity of performing a work on a larger scale, for a larger audience than he ever done before," says the composer. "I had hoped that I could persuade at least one orchestra to allow him to play it."

It almost didn't happen. The Philadelphia Orchestra was in talks to perform the concerto at Carnegie Hall earlier this year — with a different violinist. George Walker said no. But his son Gregory admits he's not the kind of superstar soloist whose name alone can sell tickets.

"We know that there are other people who, if they set their minds to it, can play this music," Gregory Walker says. "That's one of my main aspirations: that I can at least hold the torch long enough, without singeing myself, to pass it on to a great player who can make a vehicle of it, and really deliver it to the wider audience it deserves."

His father jumps in. "I'd like to correct that," says George Walker. "The fact is that in insisting that he play the concerto, I was aware that he could do justice to the work. Don't for a minute think that there's anybody who's going to play it better than he. Don't for a minute think that."

What George and Gregory Walker both hope is that their collaboration will bring attention to one piece and two careers — that deserve more of it.

https://bestthingsny.com/event/95th-year-celebration-with-pianist-george-walker-2018-04-02-rochester-ny.html

95th Year Celebration with Pianist, George Walker

Monday, Apr 2, 2018 at 7:30pm

Eastman School Of Music

433 East Main Street

Rochester, NY 14604

585-274-1000

Free

Website

The Eastman School of Music is proud to celebrate the 95th birthday year of composer and pianist George Theophilus Walker in a special alumnus recital in Hatch Recital Hall at Eastman, followed by a champagne toast and reception in Wolk Atrium for the audience. The recital, comprised of the complete (5) piano sonatas of George Walker, will be performed by Albanian pianist Redi Llupa, with opening remarks by Jamal Rossi, the Joan and Martin Messinger Dean at Eastman.

The first African American to graduate with a Doctorate from Eastman in 1956, and the first African-American composer to win a Pulitzer Prize (for Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra) in 1996, George Walker’s Eastman accolades also include an Alumni Achievement Award in 1975 and the Rochester Distinguished Scholar Medal in 1996.

“It was fortuitous for me to read an article in the New York Times in 1954 about the DMA Degree created by Dr. Howard Hanson at Eastman when I was teaching at Dillard University, a small black private college in New Orleans,” Walker recalls. “I applied for admission into the graduate program and was extremely happy to receive a fellowship. During that time Dr. Hanson proposed that DMA candidates could select a project that was not a dissertation for the DMA Degree. I chose to compose my Piano Sonata No. 2. This work has become one of the most performed American piano sonatas.”

That piano sonata, along with four others, will make up the program for Walker’s 95th birthday celebration at Eastman. “Having all five of my piano sonatas performed by Redi Llupa in a celebration of my music is very special. They represent additions to the repertoire of piano literature that should be known.” Walker adds on a personal note, “My son, Gregory, will participate in the celebration by playing my Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1.”

Walker’s career and legacy is brimming with accomplishments and successes. He blazed the trail for many African-American musicians by being; the first black instrumentalist to appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the first black instrumentalist to be signed by a major management, the National Concert Artists; the first black tenured faculty member at Smith College; first recipient of the Minority Chair established by the University of Delaware; and the first composer to receive the Whitney award. George Walker has composed over 90 works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, strings, voice, organ, clarinet, guitar, brass, woodwinds, and chorus.

“George Walker is one of the most prolific and accomplished American composers of the last century. In addition to having been awarded the coveted Pulitzer Prize, he has been honored by some of our nation’s leading cultural organizations including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame,” shares Dean Jamal Rossi. “We are very proud to consider Dr. Walker as one of Eastman’s most distinguished alumni, and I am privileged to know him as a friend.”

Walker’s works have been performed by virtually every major orchestra in the United States, and by many in England and other countries. His awards include the Harvey Gaul Prize, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo and Bennington Composer Conference Fellowships, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Rockefeller Fellowships, a Fromm Foundation commission, two Koussevitsky Awards, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust Award, the Mason Gross Memorial Award, numerous grants from the Research Councils of Smith College, The University of Colorado, Rutgers University, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts. He has received two Alumni Awards from the Eastman School of Music, the University Medal from the University of Rochester (1996), honorary doctorate degrees from Lafayette College (1982), Oberlin College (1983), Montclair State University, Bloomfield College, Curtis Institute of Music (1997) and Spelman College (2001).

It is fitting that Walker’s 95th birthday musical celebration will be at Eastman, as one of the featured pieces is one he wrote while attending as a student. “I am most grateful for the continuity of my connection with Eastman, a wonderful institution,” Walker reflects. “The support that Eastman has given me since I graduated in 1956 has been truly amazing.”

The George T. Walker 95th Birthday Year Celebration recital is free and open to the public.

THE MUSIC OF GEORGE WALKER : AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS GEORGE WALKER:

GEORGE WALKER: "Lyric for Strings" (Original Version)

GEORGE WALKER: Sonata No. 1 for Piano (1953)

GEORGE WALKER: Sinfonia No. 3 (2003)

GEORGE WALKER: Sinfonia No. 5, "Visions" (excerpt)

George Walker Lyric for String (Muti-the Philadelphia Orch.)

George Walker Music #01

GEORGE WALKER: "Music for Three" (1971)

George Walker: Concerto for Cello & Orchestra (1981)

George Walker, composer

GEORGE WALKER: "Icarus in Orbit" (2004)

George Walker (Three Songs)

GEORGE WALKER: "Movements" for Cello and Orchestra

George Walker: Concise and Precise

Lyric for Strings - George Walker

GEORGE WALKER: Violin Concerto (2008)

Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra: :I

GEORGE WALKER plays BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2

Redi Llupa | George Walker, Piano Sonata No. 3

GEORGE WALKER: Sonata No. 2 for Piano

AfriClassical: Frank Schramm interviews George Walker on YouTube

GEORGE WALKER plays MOZART Sonata in E-Flat Major

https://vimeo.com/231604140

https://vimeo.com/231726098

https://vimeo.com/231603848

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Walker_(composer)

George Walker (composer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**George Walker (holding the score) going over his Address for Orchestra with Benjamin Steinberg of the Symphony of the New World, 1968**

George Theophilus Walker (born June 27, 1922) is an African-American composer, the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He received the Pulitzer for his work Lilacs in 1996.^[1]

Walker is the father of two sons, violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker,^[2] and playwright Ian Walker.

Biography

Early life

George Theophilus Walker was born in Washington, D.C. on June 27, 1922. His father emigrated from Kingston, Jamaica^[3] to the United States where he became a physician after graduating from Temple University School of Medicine.^[4] Walker's mother, Rosa King, supervised her son's first piano lessons when he was five years old. His first teacher was Miss Mary L. Henry. Mrs. Lillian Mitchell Allen, who had earned a doctorate in music education, became his second piano teacher.^[5] Before graduating Dunbar High School, George Walker was presented in his first public recital at age 14 at Howard University's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel.^{[citation needed]}

He was admitted to the Oberlin Conservatory that same year, where he studied piano with David Moyer and organ with Arthur Poister. In 1939, he became the organist for the Graduate School of Theology of Oberlin College. Graduating at 18 from Oberlin College with the highest honors in his Conservatory class, he was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music to study piano with Rudolf Serkin, chamber music with William Primrose and Gregor Piatigorsky, and composition with Rosario Scalero, teacher of Samuel Barber.^[6] He graduated from the Curtis Institute with Artist Diplomas in piano and composition in 1945, becoming one of the first black graduates of the music school.^[7]

Career

Walker was presented in a debut recital in Manhattan's Town Hall. With this "notable" debut, as it was described by The New York Times, he became the first black instrumentalist to perform in that hall.^[8] Over the course of the next five decades, he balanced a career as a concert pianist, teacher, and composer. Two weeks after his New York debut, he performed Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy as the winner of the Philadelphia Youth Auditions.

He was the first black instrumentalist to appear with this orchestra. The following year, he played Brahms' 2nd Piano Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony, Reginald Stewart conducting, and the 4th Beethoven Concerto with Dean Dixon and his orchestra. In 1950, Walker became the first black instrumentalist to be signed by a major management, the National Concert Artists.^[9] In 1954, he toured seven European countries, playing in the major cities of Stockholm, Copenhagen, The Hague, Amsterdam, Frankfurt a Main, Lausanne, Berne, Milan and London.^[10]
Upon returning to the United States, he taught at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana for one year before entering the Doctor of Musical Arts degree program at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music in 1955.^[11] In 1956, he became the first black recipient of a doctoral degree from that institution as well as the recipient of a second Artist Diploma in piano.^[12]

George Walker was awarded both a Fulbright Fellowship and a John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1957. He spent the next two years in Paris studying composition with Nadia Boulanger. In 1959, he embarked upon another international tour, playing concerts in France, Holland and Italy. After a recital in London’s Wigmore Hall in 1963 sponsored by Mrs. Zimbalist, he received an honorary membership in the Frederic Chopin Society there.^[13]
Walker's distinguished academic career continued in 1960 with faculty appointments to the Dalcroze School of Music; the New School for Social Research,^[14] where he introduced a course in aesthetics; Smith College (1961–68), where he became the first tenured black faculty member; the University of Colorado Boulder (1968–69) as visiting professor; Rutgers University (1969–92), where he served as chairman of the music department for several years; the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (1975–78); and the University of Delaware (1975–76), where he was the recipient of the first minority chair established by the University.

He has given master classes in numerous institutions, including the Curtis Institute of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the University of Colorado Boulder, Columbia University, Wayne State University, Wellesley College, Temple University, Washington University in St. Louis, Williams College and Montclair State University.^[15]
In 1946, Walker composed his String Quartet no. 1. A string orchestra arrangement of the second movement of that work received its world premiere in a radio broadcast that was conducted by pianist Seymour Lipkin. Originally titled Lament, Walker later changed the title to Lyric for Strings.^[16] It is now one of the most frequently performed orchestral works by a living American composer.^[17] His subsequent body of work included over 90 works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, piano, strings, voice, organ, clarinet, guitar, brass, woodwinds, and chorus.^[18]

Awards and Recognition

In 1996, Walker became the first black composer to receive the coveted Pulitzer Prize In Music for his work, Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra, premiered by the Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa conducting. Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry proclaimed June 17, 1997 as “George Walker Day”.^[19] in the nation's capitol.

In 1998, he received the Composers Award from the Lancaster Symphony and the letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for "his significant contributions to the field of contemporary American Music."^[20] He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999.^[21] The following year, George Walker was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.^{[citation needed]}
Over the next several years, he received numerous awards including the Dorothy Maynor Outstanding Arts Citizen Award (2000), Classical Roots Award from the Detroit Symphony (2001), the A.I. Dupont Award from the Delaware Symphony (2002) the Washington Music Hall of Fame (2002), and the Aaron Copland ASCAP Award (2012). He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships,^[11] two Rockefeller Fellowships,^[11] a Fromm Foundation commission, two Koussevitsky Awards, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award,^[22] as well as honorary doctorate degrees from Lafayette College (1982), Oberlin College (1983), Bloomfield College (1996), Montclair State University(1997), Curtis Institute of Music (1997), Spelman College (2001), and the Eastman School of Music where he gave the Commencement Address (2012).^[23]
His autobiography, "Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist", was released in 2009 by Scarecrow Press.^[24]

Major compositions

A Red, Red Rose for Voice and Piano
Abu for Narrator and Chamber Ensembles (Network for New Music commission)
Address for Orchestra
An Eastman Overture (Eastman School of Music commission)
Antifonys for Chamber Orchestra
Bleu for Unaccompanied Violin
Cantata for Soprano, Tenor, Boys Choir, and Chamber Orchestra (Boys Choir of Harlem commission)
Canvas for Wind Ensemble and Narrator (College Band Directors National Association commission)
Cello Concerto (New York Philharmonic commission)
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (National Endowment for the Arts Commission)
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Philadelphia Orchestra premiere with Gregory Walker Gregory T.S. Walker, soloist)
Da Camera (Musica Reginae commission)
Dialogus for Cello and Orchestra (Cleveland Orchestra commission)
Emily Dickinson Songs
Five Fancies for Clarinet and Piano Four Hands (David Ensemble commission)
Foils for Orchestra (Hommage a Saint George) (Eastman School of Music commission)
Folk Songs for Orchestra
Guido's Hand (Xerox commission)
Hommage to Saint George (Eastman School of Music premiere) (Eastman School of Music commission)
Hoopla: A Touch of Glee (Las Vegas Philharmonic premiere)
Icarus In Orbit (New Jersey Youth Symphony premiere)
In Praise of Folly (New York Philharmonic premiere)
Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra (Symphony Boston premiere)
Lyric for Strings
Mass for Soloists, Chorus, and Orchestra (National Endowment for the Arts commission)
Modus (Cygnus Ensemble commission)
Movements for Cello and Orchestra (University of Illinois premiere)
Music for 3
Music for Brass (Sacred and Profane)
Music for Two Pianos
Nine Songs for Voice and Piano
Orpheus for Narrator and Chamber Orchestra (Cleveland Chamber Orchestra premiere)
Overture: In Praise of Folly
Pageant and Proclamation (New Jersey Symphony commission)
Perimeters for Clarinet and Piano
Piano Sonata No. 1
Piano Sonata No. 2
Piano Sonata No. 3
Piano Sonata No. 4
Piano Sonata No. 5
Poem for Soprano and Chamber Ensemble (National Endowment for the Arts commission)
Poeme for Violin and Orchestra (Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra premiere)
Psalms for Chorus
Serenata for Chamber Orchestra (Michigan Chamber Orchestra commission)
Sinfonia No. 1 (Fromm Foundation commission)
Sinfonia No. 2 (Koussevitsky commission)
Sinfonia No. 3
Sinfonia No. 4 (2013 premiere by New Jersey Symphony at Carnegie Hall)
Sinfonia No. 5 "Visions" (2 versions, 1 with voices and 1 without)
Sonata for Two Pianos
Sonata for Viola and Piano
Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1
Spatials for Piano
Spektra for Piano
Spires for Organ
String Quartet No. 1
String Quartet No. 2
Tangents for Chamber Orchestra (Columbus Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra commission)
Three Pieces for Organ
Two Pieces for Organ
Variations for Orchestra
Violin and Piano Sonata No. 2 (Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts premiere)
Windset for Woodwind Quintet

References

De Lerma, Dominique-Rene. "African Heritage Symphonic Series". Liner note essay. Cedille Records CDR061.
Walker, George (2009) Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, Scarecrow Press, p. 153
"Walker, George Theophilus (1922- ) - The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed". Retrieved October 1, 2016.
Walker, George (2009) Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, Scarecrow Press, p. 2
Walker, George (2009) Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, Scarecrow Press, p. 13
"The Pulitzer Prizes". Pulitzer.org. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
"Curtis Institute of Music : Timeline". Curtis.edu. October 17, 1999. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
Valdes, Lesley, "Yes, He's A Great Composer For George Walker, 1996 Pulitzer Prize Winner For Music And Dean Of Black Composers, That's Not Enough. He Wants His Prowess As A Pianist To Be Appreciated, Too," Philadelphia Inquirer, October 31, 1996
Mickey Thomas Terry, Ingrid Monson and George Walker, The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Autumn, 2000), pp. 372-88
"Composer George Walker | PBS NewsHour". Pbs.org. April 10, 1996. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
Plaskin, Glenn, “A Composer Who Backed into the Business,” NY Times, January 10, 1982
Koskoff, Ellen, Music Cultures in the United States: An Introduction, Routledge, 2004, p320
Walker, George (2009) Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, Scarecrow Press, p. 105
Butterworth, Neil, Dictionary of American Classical Composers, Routledge 2004, p. 483
Siberz, Heidi. "George Theophilus Walker: February's Contemporary Composer". Indiana Public Media. Retrieved October 30, 2016.
"George Walker: Concise and Precise". NewMusicBox.org. Retrieved September 5, 2017.
"High Quality Classical Music Streaming | Hi-Res and CD Quality Online Streaming Subscription at ClassicsOnline". Classicsonline.com. Archived from the original on October 20, 2014. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
An Online Reference Guide to African American History (2011)
"George Walker: Prominent Composer & Washingtonian Grew Up on Sherman Avenue". Park View, D.C. December 24, 2012. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
"Historical List of American Music Center Award Recipients". NewMusicBox.org. May 7, 2003. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
"American Academy of Arts and Letters - Current Members". Artsandletters.org. Archived from the original on June 24, 2016. Retrieved October 30, 2016.
"American Academy of Arts and Letters - Awards Search". Artsandletters.org. Archived from the original on June 24, 2016. Retrieved October 1, 2016.
"Commencement 2012 :: University of Rochester". Rochester.edu. Retrieved October 1, 2016.

George Walker. "Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, By George Walker, 9780810869400 | Rowman & Littlefield". Rowman.com. Retrieved October 1, 2016.

External links

George Walker official website
A 2017 Conversation with George Walker (includes video excerpts)
George Walker interview by Bruce Duffie
2012 George Walker interview by Ethan Iverson
George Theophilus Walker, African American Composer & Pianist at AfriClassical.com
George Walker, Composer Documentary produced by NJTV

Welcome to Sound Projections

Saturday, July 21, 2018

George Walker (b. June 27, 1922): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, conductor, ensemble leader, producer, scholar, and teacher

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

SUMMER, 2018

VOLUME SIX NUMBER ONE

At 95 Composer George Walker Sustains a Creative Life That Is of a Very Rare Order

George Walker

(b. June 27, 1922)

Artist Biography by James Reel

George Walker: the great American composer you've never heard of

Five essential George Walker works

In life’s coda, master composer George Walker has a symphony in mind

George Walker: Concise and Precise

Composer George Walker Writes For His Son

Hear the music

Composer George Walker Writes For His Son

95th Year Celebration with Pianist, George Walker

https://vimeo.com/231726098

https://vimeo.com/231603848

George Walker (composer)

George Walker (holding the score) going over his Address for Orchestra with Benjamin Steinberg of the Symphony of the New World, 1968

Contents

Biography

Early life

Career

Awards and Recognition

Major compositions

References

External links

Editor's Bio

Blog Archive

Labels

**George Walker (holding the score) going over his Address for Orchestra with Benjamin Steinberg of the Symphony of the New World, 1968**