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Posts tagged as “Curtis Institute of Music”

R.I.P. George Walker, 96, Trailblazing American Composer and Pulitzer Prize Winner

Composer George Walker (photo via npr.org)

by Tom Huizenga via npr.com

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, pianist and educator George Walker has died at the age of 96. Walker’s death was announced to NPR by one of his family members, Karen Schaefer, who said he died Thursday at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, N.J. after a fall.

Walker’s music was firmly rooted in the modern classical tradition, but also drew from African-American spirituals and jazz. His nearly 100 compositions range broadly, from intricately orchestrated symphonic works and concertos to intimate songs and solo piano pieces.

“His music is always characterized by a great sense of dignity, which is how he always comported himself,” says composer Jeffrey Mumford, who, as a music professor at Lorain County Community College in Ohio, uses examples of Walker’s music in his classes. “His style evolved over the years; his earlier works, some written while still a student, embodied an impressive clarity and elegance.”

Walker was a trailblazing man of “firsts,” and not just because of the Pulitzer. In the year 1945 alone, he was the first African-American pianist to play a recital at New York’s Town Hall, the first black instrumentalist to play solo with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the first black graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

The following year, Walker wrote his first string quartet. In 1990, he revised the second movement into a new piece, Lyric for Strings, which has become his most often-performed work.

In 1996, Walker broke new ground again when he became the first African-American composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music. Lilacs for voice and orchestra, set to a text by Walt Whitman, is a moving meditation on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Eleven Year-Old Prodigy Malik Kofi Set to Take Classical Music World by Storm

Malik Kofi playing the cello: photo courtesy Mario Page
Malik Kofi playing the cello: photo courtesy Mario Page

Malik Kofi is extraordinarily talented; a child prodigy, musical genius, awe-inspiring orator, with intellectual gifts well beyond his years.  Not only is the 11-year-old academically brilliant but his superior musical abilities leaves audiences spellbound.  An impressive multi-instrumentalist, Kofi plays the piano, drums and guitar. However, his passion is for the cello.
“Malik is a musical prodigy,” says Craig Hulgren, a cellist in the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, who has been Kofi’s teacher for the past five years. “He has advanced technological and interpretative abilities as a child. Beyond that he also puts in the hard work to develop those talents.”
Born into a working-class family in Birmingham, Alabama, Kofi’s unique story is a testimony to excellence against all odds.  The product of a teenage mom, Kofi’s maternal grandmother, Ruby Cox, has raised him as her own since he was an infant.  She says Kofi came out of the womb curious and eager to learn.