Classical music has seen a recent surge of interest in performing works composed by Black women. The composers whose work has received the most attention in recent years (e.g., Margaret Bonds and Florence Price) compose music that often features Black folk and vernacular idioms: their most performed works are those that illustrate this trait. By contrast, composers Irene Britton Smith and Julia Perry composed music in a more modernist and even austere style and rarely cited Black vernacular material. Conductor Kedrick Armstrong will discuss how people today make choices about what music to perform, and how those choices combine knowledge of the past with preoccupations of the present day. Why have audiences and arts organizations gravitated towards the work of Bonds and Price, but given less attention to composers like Smith and Perry? In this presentation, Maestro Armstrong will introduce sonic and stylistic features of Smith’s and Perry’s music, driving the conversation to our 21st-century values: in an era preoccupied with identity, are we overlooking important music that does not carry obvious identity markers?

This performance lecture is presented in collaboration with the American Musicological Society and the Oakland Symphony. 

Featuring

Kedrick Armstrong, presenter
Morgan Wolfe, soprano
Jon Lee, piano
Donald Lee, piano

Guest Artist Profile

Kedrick Armstrong, presenter

Kedrick Armstrong is the new Music Director of the Oakland Symphony, becoming the 9th Music Director in the orchestra’s almost 100-year history. He is also the Creative Partner and Principal Conductor of the Knox-Galesburg Symphony.

Kedrick's recent highlights include debuting at the Lyric Opera of Chicago to premiere a new opera, The Factotum, by Will Liverman and DJ King Rico. He also appeared at the Opera Theater of St. Louis as one of the festival’s assistant/ cover conductors (Tosca, La Boheme, Susannah). Guest conducting engagements have included a SummerStage and family concert with the Oakland Symphony, DePaul Opera Theater (Candide), and Chicago Opera Theater (Matthew Recio’s The Puppy Episode). He has also served as assistant conductor for Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride at Chicago Opera Theater and music director for Monteverdi’s L’Orfero with Wheaton College’s Opera Mainstage. Kedrick is on the music staff at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Named by the Washington Post as one of “22 for ’22: Composers and performers to watch,” Kedrick uses his voice and platform as a Black conductor to advocate for classical music’s performance, publication, and preservation of minority voices. This advocacy has led to various speaking engagements and a research fellowship with the American Music Research Center (University of Colorado- Boulder) studying Black female composers within the Helen Walker-Hill archives.

Kedrick spent several seasons as the music mentor/supervisor for “EmpowerYouth! Igniting Creativity through the Arts,” a unique collaboration with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Urban League. He also enjoyed working with Ravinia Festival’s REACH*TEACH*PLAY, Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative, and Chicago Sinfonietta’s Audience Matters.

Kedrick is an alum of Chicago Sinfonietta’s Project Inclusion Freeman Conducting Fellow program, where he served as Assistant Conductor during the 2018-2019 season. He holds a B.M. in History and Literature from Wheaton College and an M.M. in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He graduated from the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities. Armstrong has studied with and assisted/covered conductors Mei-Ann Chen, Gary Lewis, John Nelson, Cliff Colnot, and Lidiya Yankovskaya, among others.