“Decolonial – what remains?!”: Nikolai music on Friday

The concert series focuses on works by black composers who worked in the classical music tradition. Florence Price (USA, 1887-1953) created an important passacaglia in the Bach tradition. Nathaniel Dett (Canada, 1882-1943) and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Great Britain, 1875-1912) also composed in a late romantic, tonal language. José Maurício Nunes Garcia (Brazil, 1767-1830), in turn, created sacred pieces for choir and orchestra.

For ten years, the "Nikolai Music on Friday" series has combined music programs with the exhibitions in the Nikolaikirche. Recent programs include concerts on Paul van Ostaijen's poems (2022), improvisations on the church's image program, and concert series on the exhibitions "KreuzWeg" (2019) and "Lost Words" by Chiharu Shiota (2017).

As part of "Decoloniale - What Remains?!", "NikolaiMusik am Freitag" primarily presents works and compositions by black musicians and musicians of color from the last three centuries.

Dates:

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was a British composer. As the son of the Sierra Leonean doctor Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor and the Englishwoman Alice Hare Martin, he increasingly dealt with the history of the transatlantic slave trade over the course of his career. Coleridge-Taylor tried to draw on traditional African music and integrate it into the classical tradition, as he believed Johannes Brahms had done with Hungarian music and Antonín Dvořák with Bohemian music. After Coleridge-Taylor met the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in London, among others, he set some of his poems to music.

The concert program sheds light on Coleridge-Taylor's musical world and presents his works in dialogue with pieces by composers whose approaches and styles have and could have inspired and influenced him. The program is supplemented by improvisational contributions by Jack Day, who takes up Coleridge-Taylor's musical themes.

Florence Price (1887–1953) was the first African-American woman whose symphony was performed by a major American orchestra. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, she showed musical talent at an early age and was educated at various prestigious institutions, including the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1933, her Symphony in E Minor was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, marking a milestone in the history of African-American composers. In addition to symphonies, Price also composed organ works, chamber music and songs.

Despite her success, she remained in the shadows of music history for a long time, but in recent years her work has experienced a renaissance and is increasingly performed and appreciated on international stages. The concert evening at the Museum Nikolaikirche is entirely dedicated to her composition of a monumental passacaglia from 1927 and is complemented by improvisations by Jack Day and Moss Beynon Juckes.

Florence Price (1887–1953) was the first African-American woman whose symphony was performed by a major American orchestra. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, she showed musical talent at an early age and was educated at various prestigious institutions, including the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1933, her Symphony in E Minor was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, marking a milestone in the history of African-American composers. In addition to symphonies, Price also composed organ works, chamber music and songs.

Despite her success, she remained in the shadows of music history for a long time, but in recent years her work has experienced a renaissance and is increasingly performed and appreciated on international stages. The concert evening is dedicated to character pieces by Price and is complemented by improvisations by Jack Day and Daniel Pacitti.

To end the year, Florian Wilkes, organist of St. Hedwig's Cathedral, presents a festive New Year's Eve concert with a varied program. Highlights include Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's lyrical Impromptu No. 1, transcribed by Arthur Eaglefield Hull, and Nathaniel Dett's sensitive Adagio cantabile from the Cinnamon Grove suite. The programme is enriched by Johann Sebastian Bach's famous Pastorale, BWV 590, with its four movements, as well as his powerful Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. The ceremonial conclusion is César Franck's radiant finale from Six Pièces.