Tag Archives: hall johnson

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Canada Symposium--July 2011

Nearly bit off more than I could chew today. I’d spent several hours in the gracious company of Eugene Simpson, with whom I discussed several research approaches to Hall Johnson’s compositional philosophy and ways I should prepare for a much more extended visit and study of the Johnson collection. I then visited and got a tour of the home of my host daughter, Tianhan. We went out for an enjoyable dinner of shrimp (me) and grilled octopus (Tianhan) at an uptown restaurant in Philadelphia. (BTW, if you know of a dignified way to eat corn-on-the-cob and take the head off of shrimp, please let me know.) I am so proud of how well she is adapting to her new surroundings, which are so very different than Iowa. Since she’s now graduated from the college, I guess I’m not technically her host mother any more, but I hate giving up the…

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Canada Symposium--July 2011

Tuesday was very busy.  Last minute details that always seem to crop up.  Sessions were interesting with lively discussion, especially a couple that dealt with Newfoundland musical history. My presentation came that afternoon.  I’d put together a slideshow with pix and musical examples, then ended up not using most of it.  Surprisingly, when I asked how many of the audience attendees had either studied or performed a spiritual, they all raised their hands.  So, that changed the focus from presenting on the basics to getting into specific decisions on when I use dialect, choose to swing the melody and other stylistic considerations.  We also talked a bit about some of the recordings and in-print music scores available–recommending both the Hall Johnson collection and Willis Patterson compilation.  My audience was, as expected, all White, so we also dealt with the concern about non-Blacks singing spirituals. As I only had 30 minutes…

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