Few classical compositions by African-American women are played with any regularity, and those that do show up on concert programs often do so because of their (or their composers') status as "firsts." There is one of those here: the Piano Sonata in E minor of Florence Price, a composer who achieved professional distinction unheard of for an African-American woman in the 1930s. That sonata circulated, often with Price at the piano, around the U.S. Midwest for some years. But the rest of the music on the disc qualifies as genuinely obscure. And that's why it's a special pleasure to report that Jamaican-Canadian pianist
Maria Corley has unearthed some real gems. All of the music, in one way or another, bears witness to balancing acts, turning mainstream stylistic trends to specifically African-American ends. L. Viola Kinney's Mother's Sacrifice, composed in 1909, takes the potted-palm idiom of Ethelbert Nevin into more intense emotional realms. Perhaps the highlight of the bunch is the set of Portraits in Jazz by
Valerie Capers, a blind composer active in New York City. These little pieces (mostly a minute or so long) are not jazz solos "in the style of," but short classical compositions flavored with the styles of various jazz musicians or locales. The evocations of modern jazz musicians are the most effective --
Capers manages the impressive trick of writing music that suggests
Thelonious Monk (The Monk, track 5),
Charlie Parker (Blue-Bird, track 12), and
John Coltrane (Cool-Trane, track 13) without imitating these highly distinctive jazz stylists. Her rhythmic idiom hovers between jazz and classical conceptions, and the same might be said of that of
Margaret Bonds in Troubled Water (1967). The short pieces by Dorothy Rudd Moore and Undine Smith Moore make use of modern techniques in entirely distinctive ways. The Price sonata, a bit diffuse, nevertheless has a main opening-movement theme that artfully suggests African-American syncopations without actually being jazz or ragtime. In this work
Corley needs more zip and punch; Price was quite a virtuosa. But in general she handles the variety of styles well. Much of this music cries out for historical and critical analysis, and neither muddy sound nor a sloppy booklet marred by grammatical and typographical errors can blunt its considerable impact.