Three songs from H. Leslie Adams’s The Wider View
This February, the Daily Classical Music Post celebrates Black composers and musicians whose music has been suppressed and ignored. All of these musicians should be added to the music history and music theory curriculum. https://youtu.be/0xJ-YfqpvkQ H. Leslie Adams (born 1932) is best known for his vocal music but he also has composed many instrumental works. He studied both piano and voice growing up and then at Oberlin, California State University-Long Beach, and Ohio State University. He has won numerous awards. His music incorporates many elements; describing his piano etudes, Maria Corley said, “They are highly representative of his compositional language, including jazz-inflected syncopations, neo-romantic harmonies, and the strong melodic sense one would expect of such a brilliant composer of songs.” The Wider View, for voice and piano, contains six songs. The program notes given on the composer’s website say: “The Wider View is a panoramic portrait of human emotions, from songs...