Performance: Samantha Ege

“Homage (1990) is a birthday tribute to one of the great composers of the Harlem Renaissance: William L. Dawson. The melodic theme derives from the spiritual, “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned,” a favourite of Dawson.” – Samantha Ege

“Zenobia Powell Perry (1908-2004) was an American Composer. Perry was born in what was once a predominantly African American town of Boley, Oklahoma to a physician, Dr. Calvin B. Powell and Birdie Thompson Powell (who had some Creek Indian heritage). Perry took piano lessons as a child with Mayme Jones who had been taught by Robert Nathaniel Dett. She won a piano competition in 1919. Perry also learned to play violin as a child. She also went to the Eastman School of Music on her own to study privately with Dett in Rochester, New York. Perry studied with Dett until May 1932. At Tuskegee (1935) she studied with William L. Dawson who encouraged her to compose original work. After Tuskegee, Perry became part of a black teacher training program which was headed by Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt would become a mentor and friend to Perry and even helped sponsor her graduate studies.

From 1952 to 1954, Perry worked on her master’s degree in music in composition at Wyoming University, where she studied under Allan Arthur Willman, Darius Milhaud and Charles Jones. Perry’s music is classical and “incorporates contrapuntal, tonal, mild dissonance, with some jazz and folk influence.” She wrote an opera, Tawawa House, first performed in 1987 and revived in 2014. Perry also wrote for orchestra, bands and composed a mass. Zenobia Powell Perry’s papers are held at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago. The collection is titled Zenobia Powell Perry Scores and Music Manuscripts. The collection as a whole consists primarily of original compositions and manuscripts produced by Powell herself.”