{"id":272924,"date":"2023-06-23T12:16:42","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T18:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/?p=272924"},"modified":"2023-07-27T12:37:50","modified_gmt":"2023-07-27T18:37:50","slug":"michelle-cann-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/michelle-cann-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Pianist Michelle Cann Champions the Music of Florence Price"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo courtesy of the Curtis Institute of Music
\nStory by Kyle MacMillan<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

After Florence Price died in 1953, the Black composer faded into obscurity in large part because of prejudices surrounding her race and gender. But in the last\u00a0 decade or so, her works have experienced a meteoric renaissance that has few precedents in classical-music history.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m amazed but I\u2019m not surprised that she has caught on like wildfire,\u201d said pianist Michelle Cann, who will appear <\/span>July 20<\/span> and <\/span>21, 2023<\/span> at the Colorado Music Festival. \u201cA great story is one thing, and she definitely has a great story, but she wouldn\u2019t survive if it were just a great story. This is timeless music. It\u2019s very distinctly American. As much as she brings influences of the past, she mixes it in with these dances, spirituals, and so many other things that are very Black American as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cann has helped Price\u2019s resurgence by championing her music, and the pianist\u2019s career in turn has been boosted by her association with the skyrocketing Price. She was introduced to the composer\u2019s music in 2016 when she was asked to perform the New York premiere of Price\u2019s Piano Concerto in One Movement (1934) with <\/span>The Dream Unfinished<\/span><\/a> Orchestra.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI had never heard her name or anything about her before,\u201d she said, \u201cI think if I were just a lay person, that\u2019s a little more understandable, but I actually found it to be really disappointing that throughout all my studies, she wasn\u2019t presented to me. I knew this was really a big problem if those of us in this field don\u2019t even know her.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cann will join the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra and Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie as soloist for Price\u2019s concerto, which, despite its name, actually has three movements that flow into each other without interruption.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because the work only runs about 18 minutes, about half the length of a typical concerto, Cann and the orchestra will pair it with another short work \u2013 Maurice Ravel\u2019s Piano Concerto in G Major (1929-31). \u201cSo, when it\u2019s so short there\u2019s room to expand, and that\u2019s what is fun about it,\u201d Cann said, \u201cbecause you get two concertos on one concert,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t usually get that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Not only were the two concertos written within a few years of each other, Cann said, they share other characteristics as well. Price includes French colors and harmonies in the second section of her work, and the first movement of Ravel\u2019s concerto incorporates elements of jazz and blues. \u201cIt actually really works,\u201d the pianist said of the combination. \u201cTwo composers who really pulled from these American styles in the same concert I think will be very fun and exciting for the audience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cann was born in North Carolina and moved with her family to Avon Park, Fla., a town of about 11,000 people in the central part of the state, when she was 6. Her father was music teacher and conductor in the local schools, and her parents made sure that each of their four children took piano lessons, which she began about the same time they arrived in Florida.<\/span><\/p>\n

The youngster eagerly sought to emulate her oldest sister, who was a good piano student. \u201cI had her to look up to,\u201d she said. \u201cI was a typical little sister wanting to be like your big sister. I think I wanted to catch up to her in a certain way.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Cann began showing promise on the piano, her parents found her a new teacher \u2013 Rita Fandrich, a longtime faculty member at Florida Southern College in Lakeland. She later took more lessons in Tampa and played violin, her other instrument, in the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra in Orlando.<\/span><\/p>\n

She went on to study at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she joined the piano faculty in 2021, serving as the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cann typically teaches on Mondays, Tuesdays, and sometimes Wednesdays, and then heads off for concerts, primarily concerto appearances but also chamber music and solo recitals. \u201cThat\u2019s the way I balance my time, but it\u2019s certainly intense,\u201d she said. \u201cI definitely don\u2019t have a 9-to-5, two-days-off-a-week job. Definitely not.\u201d Her 2022-23 season has included appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, and National Symphony in Washington, D.C.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After first performing Price\u2019s Concerto in One Movement, Cann was determined to learn more about the composer, who fled her hometown of Little Rock, Ark, because of racial strife and moved to Chicago in the late 1920s. In 1933, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed the composer\u2019s Symphony No. 1 in E minor, the first composition by an African-American woman to be presented by a major orchestra.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cann has gone on to perform other Price works as well. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t get enough. I love her writing style,\u201d she said. As part of the Catalyst Quartet\u2019s <\/span>Uncovered <\/span><\/i>recording series, she joined the ensemble for a 2022 album that includes the composer\u2019s two piano quintets, and she recently released a solo recording with Price\u2019s Piano Sonata and three of four of the composer\u2019s <\/span>Fantasies n\u00e8gres. <\/span><\/i>(The fourth is lost.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very exciting to see where this started,\u201d she said, \u201cand where it is now and where I want to continue to go, which is to keep promoting and bringing awareness to other composers even beyond Florence Price.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pianist Michelle Cann performs piano concertos by Florence Price and Maurice Ravel at the 2023 Colorado Music Festival on July 20 & 21. Learn about Cann’s work in championing the music of composer Florence Price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":272925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}