Florence B. Price

Florence Price (1887 – 1953) was the first African-American woman composer to earn national recognition.  Her mother was a successful business woman, and her father a politically active author, inventor and the first black dentist of her home town Little Rock, Arkansas.

Price sold her firs composition to a publisher at the age of eleven. Already an accomplished organist and pianist, she later studied composition at the new England Conservatory.

Price’s first symphony in E-minor won first prize in a national competition and was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933.

Price composed over 300 works including another symphony, a piano concerto and numerous songs and chamber music pieces. She is well known for her spirituals arrangements, one of which there is a famous recording with Marian Anderson (My soul’s been anchored in de Lord).

• Travel’s end
• To my little son