Music: Sun Jan 14

In recognition of MLK Day, Sunday morning’s musical selections include works by composers of African descent or connected to African-American traditions.

Hale Smith’s “Faces of jazz” is a collection of teaching pieces for piano students, designed to introduce jazz rhythms and harmonies. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer of African ancestry who is especially remembered for his collection of “Twenty-Four Negro Melodies”, first published in 1905. These solo piano works use melodies connected to the African continent, the Caribbean, or the world of American Spirituals, and cast them as romantic-style solo piano pieces. “Take Nabandji” is a Southeast African tune, and the Bamboula is a traditional African dance popular in the West Indies.

May Aufderheide is remembered as one of the premiere female exponents of Ragtime. Her “Dusty” rag of 1908 was such a hit, that her father,  an Indianapolis-based loan broker, inaugurated his own music publishing firm!

Click here for a preview of “Dusty” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35ZQcSRwHkg

Read on for programming details.

Centering Music: Adam Kent, piano

Take Nabandji                        
                                 Southeast African, arr. by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

From “Faces of Jazz”,

            My Scarf Is Yellow; The Broken Saxophone; Scrambled Eggs and Ernie; That’s Mike; An Asphodel for Marcel; Goin’ in a Hurry; Come to My Party

Hale Smith

Opening Music:
The Bamboula

                                                West Indian, arr. by Coleridge-Taylor

Offertory:
Dusty              

                                                May Aufderheide