It was 1989, and Helen Walker-Hill, a member of the piano faculty at the University of Colorado in Boulder, was working on a book titled “From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music.”
She wanted to interview a Chicago teacher named Irene Britton Smith — not because Smith was a composer, as far as she knew, but because Smith had reportedly known African-American composers Florence Price and Margaret Bonds.
What she discovered brought a completely unknown African-American composer into the spotlight. And Smith’s work is now a topic of interest for Arkansas Philharmonic musicians Er-Gene Kahng and Nathan Carterette, who will perform her Violin Sonata for Piano Feb. 19.
Arkansas Philharmonic musicians Er-Gene Kahng (left) and Nathan Carterette will perform Irene Britton Smith’s Violin Sonata for Piano live Feb. 19 via the orchestra’s Facebook page. Smith was an African-American woman who composed classical music in Chicago in the middle of the 20th century.
(Courtesy Photos)
“I first performed this work when I was performing a concert with Dr. Samantha Ege in Singapore,” remembers violinist Kahng. “She introduced me to her and Ethel Smyth’s violin sonatas.”
“Er-Gene herself originally mentioned the Violin Sonata to me,” adds pianist Carterette. “It is published by Vivace Press, a firm dedicated to publishing work of lesser known composers, especially women. They have some other pieces by her, and really a treasure trove of scores that cannot be found elsewhere.”
According to her 1999 obituary in The Chicago Tribune, Smith earned a bachelor’s of music in composition from the American Conservatory of Music, studied at New York’s Juilliard School and received a master’s degree in musical composition from DePaul University. Her life’s work was teaching — more than 42 years — in the Chicago Public Schools. Music was her hobby: For example, she took a sabbatical to study at Juilliard.
But she also created about 30 pieces of classical music, and according to Walker-Hill, her spiritual arrangement for baritone and piano, “Let Us Break Bread Together,” was sung in 1972 by Theodore Charles Stone, noted concert artist and music critic for the Chicago Defender. In 1984 it was performed again, at the Second Presbyterian Church, where her “Fairest Lord Jesus” was later programmed (1989). Songs from her Paul Laurence Dunbar Dream Cycle, Walker-Hill wrote, were performed by several noted artists and broadcast over WFMT, drawing a congratulatory letter from Cyrus Colter, chairman of the African-American studies department at Northwestern University.
It has also been written that “Smith’s compositional style displayed no trace of black idioms.”
“She apparently wanted to compose concert music in a sort of neo-Classical style, taking her summers off from teaching school to study with very prominent teachers in that world,” says Kahng, who uses words like coloristic, impressionistic and evocative to describe Smith’s music. “While there were composers like Florence Price who deliberately fused African-American heritage music with ‘classical’ forms, Irene Britton Smith did not hold that as a personal goal. Her inspiration was all original.
“I think in a way it can be a stereotype to expect African-American composers to use heritage music in their output, and one they shouldn’t be bound to,” Kahng muses. “That said, Irene Britton Smith revered Florence Price for her success.”
Rediscovering music like Smith’s is “a confirmation and acknowledgement of a truth, of an identity that was previously unavailable, unknown and stigmatized to successive generations,” says Kahng. “To have a hand in creating inclusive spaces by telling a broader history with more voices — and from the viewpoint of underrepresented voices — is powerful.
Arkansas Philharmonic musicians Er-Gene Kahng (left) and Nathan Carterette will perform Irene Britton Smith’s Violin Sonata for Piano live Feb. 19 via the orchestra’s Facebook page. Smith was an African-American woman who composed classical music in Chicago in the middle of the 20th century.
(Courtesy Photos)
“While we can’t speak for her other than reading her interview with Helen Walker-Hill, a love for music and creation shines through her work, in my opinion, a love that was unmarred by anyone else.”
FAQ
Irene Britton Smith:
Violin Sonata for Piano
WHEN — 7 p.m. Feb. 19
WHERE — Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra page on Facebook
COST — Free
INFO — arphil.org
FYI — The live virtual performance will talk about her life and compositions and then showcase the three movements of her sonata.
