Original broadside for a performance by the Coleridge-Taylor Quintette [Quintet] at Zion Baptist Church, March 19, 1915

N.p. N.p., 1915. Vintage broadside for a performance by the Coleridge-Taylor Quintette at Zion Baptist Church, March 19 1915.

An exceptionally early performance by William Grant Still, likely the first ensemble in which he was bandleader, named for the mixed-race English composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The broadside very possibly represents the first public billing of Still as a composer. Still would have been only 19 at the time of the recital, having just left Wilberforce University and began working as a freelance performer and arranger for bands throughout the Ohio region.

Born in 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi, and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Still began to study violin at 14, and shortly thereafter taught himself clarinet, saxophone, oboe, double bass, cello, and viola. He studied for a time at Wilberforce University, and briefly at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, as well as privately under composers George Chadwick and Edward Varèse. In 1916 Still began working for W.C. Handy’s band in Memphis, and after a stint in the US Navy during World War I, continued his work with Handy in Harlem, where he became associated with many of the cultural figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Over the next several decades Still would earn the moniker “Dean of Afro-American Composers,” composing nearly 200 works—including five symphonies, four ballets, nine operas, and over thirty choral pieces. He was the first African American to have a symphony performed by a leading orchestra (“Afro-American Symphony,” 1930), the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra (Los Angeles Philharmonic, 1936), the first American composer to have an opera produced by the New York City Opera (“Troubled Island,” 1949), and the first African American composer to have an opera nationally televised (“A Bayou Legend,” 1981).

A historic broadside representing one of the earliest public performances by one of the most significant composers of the twentieth century.

9 x 13.5 inches. Very Good, with moderate soil and faint foxing overall, a 2.5-inch closed tear to the left edge, and pinholes and small chips at three corners.

[Book #155662]