Daily Classical Music Post

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/by0xgq_Pu8k Mary Watkins (born 1939) is known for her jazz works as well as classical compositions. She began studying music when she was four, and her earliest compositions date from when she was eight. Watkins said, “I started this musical journey in Pueblo, Colorado, as a little piano student. I was not quite four years old and didn’t have any idea why I was being given piano lessons. . . . From the very beginning I was admonished to confine my piano playing to the written notes on the page because it was of great importance that I be ‘literate.’ . . . For that reason, I was not interested in piano lessons though I did as I was told. Not until I dared to cross that forbidden line (using my ear), did I really become interested in music.” She received...