Watch Live<\/strong> By the mid-1900s, Still was known as the \u201cdean of African American composers\u201d for his prolific, pathbreaking career. Associate Professor of Music Hiroya Miura, the orchestra\u2019s director and conductor, selected Festive Overture<\/em> \u201cknowing that this is the first Black president that Bates is inaugurating, and also that Still was the first Black American composer to have his music played by major American orchestras.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few of Still\u2019s achievements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still wrote Festive Overture<\/em>, the piece being performed at the Jenkins inauguration, in 1944 as the winning entry in a nationwide competition by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the orchestra\u2019s 50th anniversary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It opens with a brass fanfare and an exuberant march. The middle section serves as a romantic interlude with cinematic echoes, a nod to Still\u2019s wide ranging career that also included arranging works for theater and for Hollywood films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Born in 1895 in Woodville, Miss., to parents who were teachers, Still attended Wilberforce University, a historically Black college in Ohio, leaving before graduating to pursue music. <\/p>\n\n\n One of his first gigs was arranging music for famed blues pioneer W.C. Handy<\/a>. Still was the first person to arrange Handy\u2019s \u201cBeale Street Blues\u201d and \u201cSt. Louis Blues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was Still\u2019s first experience with blues music and it inspired him to use his music as a social force. As he said in 1967<\/a>, \u201cIn the South, where I had gone around and listened to [blues musicians] at their source, I felt that they represented the yearning of people who were reaching out for something that they\u2019d been denied…. I felt that hope and sorrow in the blues, and I wanted to use that idiom, I wanted to dignify it through using it in major symphonic composition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still served in the U.S. Navy in World War I. Admittedly \u201cso bad\u201d in his initial job as a mess attendant, he began playing the violin with a white pianist in the officers\u2019 mess. \u201cEven when we were attacked by torpedoes…we had to keep the music going,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the war, he began working as a performer and arranger in clubs and musical theater; he also briefly studied at Oberlin; with George Chadwick at New England Conservatory; and privately with experimental composer Edgard Var\u00e8se. One of his gigs was playing oboe in the pit orchestra for the landmark 1921 musical revue Shuffle Along<\/em>, which is credited with inspiring the Harlem Renaissance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early 1920s, Still was music director, arranger, and artistic director for Black Swan Records<\/a>, founded by Handy\u2019s partner, Harry Pace, and based in Harlem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still wrote his best-known work, the symphony Afro-American<\/em>, in 1930. Besides the title, Still offered other clues about the message of the music, including written notes that it was about \u201cthe sons of the soil\u201d and, optimistically, about the \u201ctransforming effect of progress\u201d for Black Americans. He suggested four subtitles for its movements, each building upon and succeeding the other: \u201cLonging,\u201d \u201cSorrow,\u201d \u201cHumor,\u201d and \u201cAspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe pathos of [the blues\u2019] melodic content bespeaks the anguish of human hearts,\u201d Still wrote. \u201cWhat is more, they, unlike many spirituals, do not exhibit the influence of caucasians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n William Grant Still’s <\/em>Afro-American, performed in 2018 by The Orchestra Now:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n He settled in Los Angeles in the 1930s, a decade that saw him receive two Guggenheim Fellowships, and continued to compose. In 1936, The Call<\/em>, the prominent Black newspaper of Kansas City, Mo., reported that Still had landed \u201cprobably the most significant official job ever given to a Negro in the motion picture industry\u201d when he was signed as an assistant musical director to Academy Award-winning musical director Morris Stoloff.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOf special interest is the fact that Still\u2019s job is not…of compositing Negro spirituals and folklore of his race for the pictures,\u201d The Call <\/em>reported, but to create the best possible music for any given picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStill was an incredible figure because he led so many lives in a way,\u201d says Miura. He was a musician, band director, musical director, and composer. \u201cAnd he was also a big influence for people like Duke Ellington. So he was really at the confluence of different musical genres.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1940, Still wrote a ballad based on a graphic poem<\/a> protesting the fact that federal antilynching legislation was stalled in the U.S. Senate. And They Lynched Him on a Tree<\/em> has been called Still\u2019s \u201cmost important work of direct racial protest<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still was a protester and a patriot. During World War II, Still was one of 17 composers invited by the League of Composers to write a work that reflected patriotic themes and the war. He chose to honor Black Americans fighting abroad, creating \u201cIn Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still\u2019s patriotism and loyalty to the U.S. ran deep, his granddaughter, the musician and journalist Celeste Headlee, told Colorado Public Radio<\/a> in 2020. \u201cMy grandfather was a patriot to his dying day. He came out of a tradition from my great-grandmother of believing that African Americans could earn a safe and successful place in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writing about \u201cThe Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy,\u201d Still said, \u201cOur civilization has known no greater patriotism, no greater loyalty than that shown by the colored men who fight and died for democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cI also hope that our tribute to those who died will make the democracy for which they fought greater and broader than it has ever been before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Still, service in World War II and other patriotic contributions could be the turning point for Black Americans. As Headlee said, \u201cIf white people in general knew how hard working and good and brave and moral African Americans were, that racism would end. He was wrong about that. But part of his patriotism and love for his country came from this optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n William Grant Still’s “In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy,” performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in January 1945. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Still\u2019s honorary degree citation from Bates reflects his efforts to achieve racial and social justice through his music. \u201cSome…have improved race relations through court enactments; others have written flaming books or moving plays. William Grant Still\u2019s contribution has been as a dedicated man who strongly believes that if a negro\u2019s creative art is of first quality he will be ranked among the leaders in interracial influence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her interview, Headlee said she believed that her grandfather, who died in 1978, didn\u2019t think that he would be remembered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, in Los Angeles, the William Grant Still Arts Center is part of the city\u2019s Department of Cultural Affairs and his papers are preserved by Duke University\u2019s Rubenstein Library and the University of Arkansas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over this past winter, his 1963 opera, Highway 1, USA<\/em><\/a>, was presented by the Los Angeles Opera<\/a>. And recently, Still\u2019s Symphony no. 2, Song of a New Race<\/em>, was performed by The Orchestra Now as part of the current Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, in Merrill Gymnasium on the Bates campus on May 4 and streamed to the world, Bates will present Still\u2019s optimistic Festive Overture<\/em>, which \u201cbespeaks the warmth of the American people and the grandeur of scenic America,\u201d according to its original notes, to create a happy and optimistic vibe for the installation of the ninth Bates president, the college’s first Black leader, Garry W. Jenkins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Still, who received an honorary degree from Bates 70 years ago and whose music will be performed May 4 during the installation of Bates President Jenkins, was known as the dean of African American composers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":162447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":162447,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11010],"tags":[12349],"class_list":["post-162430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-arts","tag-jenkins-inauguration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162430"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162467,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162430\/revisions\/162467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Featuring the music of William Grant Still, the installation ceremony for President Jenkins will be streamed live and be available for on-demand viewing afterward starting at 10:30 EDT. The ceremony can be viewed on the Bates website<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a>, and YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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