Hale Smith’s Toussaint L'Ouverture, 1803
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/wCOqwVk2uUI Hale Smith (1925–2009) studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music (BMus and MMus). His distinguished career is detailed by a former student, Marilyn Harris, on her website ( http://www.marilynharris.com/ ). His early training on the piano included jazz as well as classical music, and this is evident in many of his compositions. His first jobs following graduation were in the music publishing business as an editor. He worked for several different publishers in New York City in the late 1950s and 1960s. He once described himself as “one of America’s most famous unknown composers.” His compositions reveal a wide range of knowledge of many different styles, ranging from serial works like his Contours for Orchestra to lyrical works like The Val...