Downes’ EP Series Surveys Black Composers

This past June I wrote about how pianist Lara Downes recorded a series of four EP releases entitled Florence Price: Piano Discoveries. Two months ago she launched a new EP series. This one is entitled Rising Sun Music; and the plan is that, through a collection of recordings, each released on the first Friday of every month, beginning on February 5, Downes would shed a bright light on the music and stories of Black composers over the past 200 years.

As of today, three of those albums have been released, each with its own title associated with four composers as follows:

1. February, Remember Me To Harlem: Benny Golson, Eubie Blake, William Grant Still, Margaret Bonds
2. March, Phenomenal Women: Hazel Scott, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Nora Holt
3. April, Spring Fever: Nkeiru Okoye, Alvin Singleton, H. Leslie Adams, Betty Jackson King

Most of the tracks are solo piano performances. However, there are also duo offerings. For example, “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed” is a song by Bonds on Phenomenal Women with soprano Nicole Cabell accompanied by Downes. There are also instrumental duos, such as Adams’ “Ecstasy of Love” on the April album, featuring Jordan Bak performing with Downes. Each of these albums is currently being released only for MP3 download by Amazon.com, and the above hyperlinks lead to the album download Web pages. These Web pages also identify those performers that Downs accompanies on their respective tracks.

Each of the three albums released since this project began consists of four relatively brief offerings, one for each of the composers enumerated above. Phenomenal Women also includes five tracks of commentary by Downes, but that is the only one of the three albums released thus far to provide background material. Similarly, none of the downloads include downloadable PDF files of “program notes.” This is somewhat unfortunate, since each of the composers led a life worth knowing, as this site recently demonstrated when writing about a new biography of Florence Price (whose birthday was yesterday). However, Shuman Associates has created a Web page that currently provides a one-paragraph overview for each of the albums, along with a video window of Downes playing Bonds’ “Tangamerican,” a composition that is not included on any of the three albums released to date.