Black History Month is an event that has been celebrated worldwide for decades. The UK first celebrated it in October 1987, and they continue to celebrate it each year in the month of October. Each year, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History designates a theme for Black History Month. Black pianists have made numerous meaningful contributions to piano music and music in general. This Black History Month, why not explore the lives and works of trailblazing Black musicians who have changed music history? Please note that this list of musicians is by no means exhaustive.
Distribution of African Americans in the USA
Pioneering Pianists
Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins (1849-1908)
Wiggins, also known as 'Blind Tom', was a musical prodigy and one of the best known performing pianists of the 19th century. Wiggins' musical genius, race and disability makes him one of classical music history's most important black pianists. Unfortunately over his early life, he became a 'prized possession' of the family that had bought him, and was used up and down the country for entertainment - similar to a 'circus act'. He even appeared at a private concert at Willard Hall in Washington DC at the age of just 10.
Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
Scott Joplin Biography | Father of Ragtime Music
How can we not include the King of Ragtime? Joplin’s birthplace is contested, but he’s believed to have grown up in Texarkana, a town that straddles the Texas and Arkansas border. The young Joplin got his start on piano by playing one in his mother’s employer’s home. Whilst Joplin was not the first pianist to compose a piece of ragtime music - Joplin said in 1913, "Ragtime music in America [has existed] ever since the Negro race has been here, but the white people took no notice of it until about twenty years ago [in the 1890s]" - he was responsible for writing the genre's first and most influential hit called 'The Maple Leaf Rag'.
Joplin made a career out of playing at social clubs and publishing sheet music, but his finances were sometimes unstable. The success of the genre bled into the European classical music scene at the time. Composer Debussy famously utilised Ragtime in three of his piano pieces. Joplin is best known for his ragtime masterpieces “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer” (a.k.a. the ice cream truck song). He worked for years on his opera Treemonisha but didn’t live to see it performed. In the 1970s, there was a revived interest in ragtime and in Joplin’s music.
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Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is better known as a composer and as a violinist rather than a pianist. But the British composer sometimes dubbed “Black Mahler” did make gorgeous contributions to piano such as Forest Scenes and the Valse Suite for Piano. Coleridge-Taylor identified as Anglo-African. His mother was British and his father, who taught him how to play the violin, was from Sierra Leone. Coleridge-Taylor was also a fan of poetry, and his cantata trilogy The Song of Hiawatha was based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Not only was Price a pianist, she was also a composer, organist and music teacher. Florence Price was born to a music teacher mother, who instilled a love of music in Florence from an early age. At the age of 4, she had her first piano performance, and at 11, her first composition was published. She was in fact recognised as the first ever black woman to have her music played by a major orchestra. The piece that was chosen was her First Symphony, which won the orchestral category in the Wanamaker Music Composition Contest. Unsurprisingly, she graduated from the Conservatory of Music in Boston with honors, receiving a teaching certificate and an artist diploma in organ.
As a teacher, she influenced many upcoming Black musicians and composers, and received the honor of being the first Black woman to have her composition played by a major U.S orchestra, with Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing her Symphony No. 1 in 1933. Her Symphony No. 1 debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. But while this inaugural performance gave her career an instant boost, Price would continue struggling for recognition. She once wrote: “I have two handicaps. Nevertheless, Price’s career is nothing short of impressive. Nurtured by her mother, she gave her first recital at age four and graduated high school at age 14 as valedictorian. Price's music fell into obscurity in the years after her death in 1953. However, in 2009, a huge chunk of her works was found in her former summer house in Chicago.
William L. Dawson (1899-1990)
William L. Dawson was a skilled trombonist as a child, and ran away from home as a teenager to pursue a career in music at Tuskgee Institute (now know as Tuskgee University). After graduating with honors, he would go on to receive a master's in composition from the American Conservatory of Music. He would start his career by teaching at Tuskgee, and directing the 100-member choir, recognized internationally and sponsored by the White House. Last February 2024, the Modesto Symphony Orchestra performed his most famous composition: Negro Folk Symphony. It premiered in 1934 by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, and masterfully showed the evolution of American Classical music by incorporating elements of Black culture, blending them masterfully with classical forms.
Joseph Bologne - Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799)
Not much is known about the Chevalier’s early music education, other than at the age of 7, he was sent to Paris for his musical studies. He would debut as a solo violinist in one of Europe’s most renowned orchestras, Le Concert des Amateurs, playing two of his own violin concertos. He was appointed the next conductor of the orchestra, only furthering its renown and reputation across the globe. An accomplished composition writer, performer, fencer, and socialite, it is no surprise that president John Adams is quoted in saying “he is the most accomplished man in Europe”.
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George Walker (1922-2018)
George Walker has the distinction of being the first Black composer to receive a Pulitzer Prize in Music for his work, Lilacs in 1996. During his education at Curtis Institute of Music, he studied under many great classical performers and teachers, including Rudolf Serkin, Gregor Piatigorsky, and William Primrose. Perhaps this period, including his own experiences growing up around jazz, contributed to his unique composition style, where he did not tie himself down to one label or genre.
Marian Anderson (1897-1993)
Marian Anderson was an important figurehead not only in the opera community, but the civil rights movement in its entirety. Not to be discouraged by the roadblocks that would try and prevent her from a career in singing, she received her first spotlight in a singing competition with the New York Philharmonic at the age of 25, which propelled her onto singing tours across Europe and the United States. After initially being denied to sing at a concert in Washington D.C in 1939, by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Anderson was put into the international spotlight, which was not the norm for a female Black musician. After receiving presidential support from Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor, Anderson would perform an open-air concert on Easter Sunday, 1939 to an integrated crowd of 75,000 people, and a radio audience of millions. Marian was invited by the MSO in 1956 to perform a recital at the historic Strand Theater (where Brenden Theaters now resides in Downtown Modesto). The audience was at full capacity and according to Pat Morrison of the Modesto Bee, “Her direct and reverent style, deep in feeling and calm in confidence lends a spiritual tone to her voice.
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
Duke Ellington spent most of his early musical years writing one-off compositions while working other jobs. For example, his first composition, entirely written by ear was the “Soda Jerk Rag” at the age of 15. Around 1919, however, Ellington was encouraged by artists around him to pursue his musical career. Finding success as a piano player, Ellington formed his own group that would play around Virginia and Washington D.C. He would gain national recognition, however, in the1920s, with his orchestra’s feature in the Cotton Club at Harlem. He would conduct his jazz orchestra until his last days and received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1999.
Hazel Scott (1920-1981)
As a child, she was something of a prodigy, notably gaining a scholarship to Juilliard at the age of eight. Her piano playing was all about stretching the boundaries and breaking the rules, and she would often break down familiar compositions by the likes of Beethoven and create something new from them. She famously played two pianos at the same time in 1943, in a film called The Heat's On. By 1945, she was earning the equivalent today of almost a million dollars a year.
Art Tatum (1909-1956)
One of the world’s legendary jazz pianists, Art Tatum was a legally blind prodigy from Toledo, Ohio. Tatum’s most well-known performance is probably “Tea for Time.” His technical virtuosity is otherworldly, with sweeping runs and rich ornamentations, and he’s considered one of the most technically sophisticated pianists of any genre. And while Tatum died relatively young at the age of 47, his legacy can still be felt today.
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Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)
If technical virtuosity is your cup of tea, another icon you should definitely check out is Oscar Peterson.
Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)
A prolific arranger and composer, Mary Lou Williams penned over 350 compositions in her lifetime. And while her name isn’t as instantly recognizable as other jazz greats, she’s had a hand in creating them. Williams is perhaps most known for her work with Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, for which she contributed composing and arranging work along with piano playing. Williams was also known for her deftness at musical notation.
Other Notable Black Pianists
Andre Watts, Leon Bates, Awadagin Pratt, Raymond Jackson, George Walker, Natalie Hinderas, Kay Pace are all classical pianists.
The Socioeconomic Context of Classical Piano
The fact of the matter is that classical piano is largely a rich person's avocation. Pianos, their maintenance, GOOD piano instruction, these are expensive propositions! And this was not available for most Blacks until recently. A big exception, Duke Ellington, whose father was the White House butler; Duke made the best of a good situation, still with the odds against him. Until the emergence of the Asian economic juggernaut of the past 40 or so years, the planet's monetary wealth has been confined to European and white North American society. Things are changing.
I bemoan the lack of cultural education in our schools and in media and in society. Why should any kid, of any background want to be a Classical Concert Artist? Dead white man music; how uncool is that? And that's how it seems to a lot of kids, that's how academia and the media portray it. Oh, and the "practical" side of society says "Make money"! Don't waste your life doing that, no one cares, you've got to make a living". Making a dying is more like it.
