Then But Also Now

When a concert has the word "history" in the title, you might think it'll only be dusting off music from the distant past. Well, that's partly true of this Sunday's Black History Concert, which features some pioneering work by African-American women composers. But you'll also hear music by present-day composers, including some living among us.

The Austin Chamber Music Center's annual free concert of chamber music by African-American composers and musicians has long brought many an unknown or a neglected work of old back to the concert hall – everything from William Grant Still's Suite for Violin and Piano to Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert – but this year, it will also be offering you a chance to hear compositions by Austin saxophonist Marcus Wilcher (Marcus Wilcher Quartet) and Texas A & M University music professor David Wilborn. Wilcher will be performing his own Fighting Fate, while Wilborn's My What a Wonderful Day, and Hey Reb, Pass the Biscuits! will get a workout from the Minor 4th Trombone Quartet, a foursome of Butler School of Music grads who now teach at area universities: Oscar Diaz (Associate Professor, Texas A & M University - Kingsville), Martin McCain (Associate Professor, Texas State University), Rai Morales (Assistant Professor, Texas A & M University - Corpus Christi), and Javier Stuppard (Assistant Professor, Huston-Tillotson University). And Martin will duet with his wife, pianist Artina McCain, on Wilborn's Tango Nuevo.

Of course, past composers will be well represented, and the participation of Artina McCain and soprano Icy Simpson-Monroe means they'll be performing several works from their 2012 Longhorn Music recording I, Too. Simpson-Monroe will sing "Night," by Florence B. Price, this country's first African-American female symphonic composer, and the Three Dream Portraits ("Minstrel Man," "Dream Variations," and "I, Too") by Margaret Bonds, who studied with Price. Artina McCain will also perform one of Bonds' signature piano works, "Troubled Water," which reinvents the spiritual "Wade in the Water" with jazz and blues inflections.

Also on the program will be H.T. Burleigh's classic "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," Hal Johnson's "Ride On, King Jesus," (also on I, Too), and Coleridge Taylor-Perkinson's piano solo Scherzo, Javier Stuppard's arrangement of the Beatles' hit "Yesterday," and Tom Dossett's Road to Topaz. So you can tell this will be a rich tapestry of music. And as this will be the first time this concert has been presented at the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, it will be making a little history as well as preserving and presenting it.

And did we mention the concert is FREE?

The Austin Chamber Music Center's 2015 Black History Concert will take place Sun., Jan. 11, 4pm, at the Carver Museum and Cultural Center, 1165 Angelina. For more information, call 512/454-0026 or visit www.austinchambermusic.org.