“The Caged Bird: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price”

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“The Caged Bird: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price” traces the eponymous Arkansas native’s life and the culture in which she lived, beginning with her birth in Little Rock in 1887. Welcomed into an extraordinarily gifted family, which moved in the circles of the social set historian Willard Gatewood reefrred to as “Aristocrats of Color,” Florence grew up in what was, for a time, a congenial environment.
During this period, Florence also became a favorite composer of the great soprano Marian Anderson, whose Easter Sunday concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 marked a seminal moment in civil rights history. Anderson concluded the legendary concert with a song Florence wrote and composed.
Explore more of Florence Price’s fascinating life with leading historians and musicologists in a story woven throughout with leading classical musicians’ performances of newly discovered compositions by Florence Price Monday, Nov. 16, at 9 p.m.
The documentary was supported in part by grants from the Arkansas Humanities Council, the Department of Arkansas Heritage, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Arkansas.
Filmmaker James Greeson is a professor of music at the University of Arkansas and composer of more than 15 documentary film scores, including the regional Emmy award-winning score for the film “The Buffalo Flows.” Greeson also wrote and produced “Conlon Nancarrow: Virtuoso of the Player Piano,” his first documentary film, which was also broadcast on AETN, in 2011 as a centennial tribute to the Arkansas native.
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