Program for Chelsea Randall – January 20, 2023
Friday, January 20, 2023 at 8 pm
download a copy of this program here.
Chelsea Randall, piano
American Mavericks
Program
George Walker
Guido’s Hand: Five Pieces for Piano (1986)
Chloe Clarke Smith
The Forest (2013)
West Coast Premiere
Dorothy Rudd Moore
Dream and Variations (excerpts) (1974)
Jonathan Bailey Holland
Two Part Inventions for Piano (1993)
Joyce Solomon Moorman
A Summer Afternoon in South Carolina, 3rd Movement (1983)
Regina Harris Baiocchi
Azuretta (2000)
About the music
George Walker (1922–2018) was a pioneering composer who wrote nearly 100 works for piano, voice, orchestra, chamber, and solo instruments. A man of many firsts, Walker was the first Black winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, the first Black graduate of Curtis Institute and the first Black recipient of a PhD from Eastman Conservatory. He was an accomplished pianist, but was unable to pursue the concert career he desired due to the insurmountable barriers of racism he faced. Walker’s compositional style is characterized as precise, elegant and concise, and notably interweaves elements of spirituals, jazz and folk in subtle and novel ways.
Chloe Clarke Smith (b. 2003) is a composer-pianist from Baltimore, MD. Her music explores atmospheric and ethereal worlds, with emphasis on telling a new story with each piece. Chloe is currently studying at The Boston Conservatory of Music at Berklee as a bachelor’s student in Composition. She is also an advanced pianist and a graduate of the Peabody Preparatory in Baltimore. She performed in the Maryland Arts Education Festival and competed in a variety of piano competitions throughout her high school education. During her undergraduate studies, she composed for the new music ensembles Yarn/Wire and Iris Quartet, and is currently working on a new piece for Splinter Reeds.
Joyce Solomon Moorman (b. 1946) earned her M.A.T. degree from Rutgers University, M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and an Ed.D. degree from Columbia University. Her compositions have been performed by Lilan Parrot, Triad Chorale, Wilson Moorman, LonGar Ebony Ensemble, the Woodhill Chamber Ensemble, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble, After Dinner Opera Company, Sandra Billingslea, the Plymouth Chorus and Orchestra, the Cygnus Chamber Ensemble, the Moravian Philharmonic, the Afro-American Chamber Music Society of Los Angeles. Now retired, she was a Professor in the Music and Art Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Dorothy Rudd Moore (1940–2022) was notably a founding member of the Black Composers Society of NY (1968–1973), one of the first organization of its kind to amplify Black voices in classical music. She was a graduate of Howard University, studied composition with the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris and went on to compose song cycles, chamber pieces, orchestral music, piano music, and an opera. A passionate educator, she held faculty positions at NYU and Harlem School of the Arts. Her works were unpublished during her lifetime, and some remain unpublished to this day.
Jonathan Bailey Holland (b. 1974). His works have been commissioned and performed by numerous orchestras, including the Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Memphis, Philadelphia, San Antonio, St. Louis, and South Bend Symphony orchestras, as well as the Auros Group for New Music, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Transient Canvas, Boston Opera Collaborative, and many others. He has received honors from the Fromm Foundation Commission, American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Music Center, ASCAP and other institutions. He is chair of Composition, Contemporary Music and Core Studies at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Regina Harris Baiocchi (b. 1956) has written orchestral music, opera, a hand drum concerto, marimba concerto, ballet, chamber music, vocal and instrumental music. Her work has been performed by Detroit Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Seattle Philharmonic and internationally acclaimed artists. She is the recipient of awards from National Endowment for the Arts and Art institute of Chicago among others. Baiocchi is also an accomplished poet and writer who was mentored by Gwendolyn Brooks, and her poetry and prose appear in Chicago Tribune Magazine and AIM Magazine among others.
About the musician
Chelsea Randall is a New York-native pianist and Artistic Director. She is a dedicated advocate of underrepresented composers and new music, and seeks to create fresh dialogues between the old, new and undiscovered as a performer and collaborator. Her eclectic programming has been featured at national and international venues including Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Kaufmann Center, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Yamaha Piano Salon, Steinway Hall, The Princeton Club, Mannes School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, St. Peter’s Church, Hammersmith in London, Clare College at the University of Cambridge, and Théâtre Adyar in Paris, and she has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician at the Pacific, Colby, Salluzo, Allegro and Orvieto festivals, among others. Chelsea is the recipient of numerous accolades, including performance and research grants from New Music USA, Live From Our Living Rooms, McGill University and Conservatoire de Paris. Highlights of her 2022–23 Season include the launch of American Mavericks, an ongoing project dedicated to 20th and 21st century Black American composers, an accompanying US tour, and world premieres of piano works commissioned for the project. In Spring ‘23, Chelsea will present a collaboration with kora master Malang Jobarteh, exploring interrelationships between West African music and piano works by György Ligeti, Joshua Uzoigwe and others, at the Brooklyn Conservatory, supported by New Music USA’s 2022–23 Creator Development Fund.
Chelsea is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of EXTENSITY, a new concert series in New York aiming to foster interdisciplinary connections between artistic disciplines with emphasis on underrepresented and new voices. EXTENSITY’s second season kicked off in March 2022 with a month-long festival dedicated to the work of living women composers. In summer 2021, Chelsea was artist-in-residence with EXTENSITY at The Box Factory in Ridgewood, NY.
As an educator, Chelsea has taught piano and chamber music at Third Street Music School, held teaching artist positions in New York and abroad, and currently runs Clinton Hill Piano Studio in Brooklyn. She received her musical education from New York University, The Royal College of Music in London and The Juilliard School. Her teachers and mentors included Niel Immelman, Anthony di Bonaventura and Herbert Stessin.
Chelsea is also an accomplished editor and writer, and considers her editorial and musical pursuits to be intertwined and mutually reinforcing. She has worked at presses and journals including Columbia University Press, Soft Skull Press and The New York Quarterly, and holds a degree in English from The Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU.