The Royal Scottish National Orchestra collaborates with its assistant conductor Kellen Gray to record works by three of the greatest African-American voices of the twentieth century. The two symphonies by William Levi Dawson and William Grant Still, coinciding with Black History Month, have proven to be fundamental in the use of African-American idioms in symphonic form.
Each composer focused on one of two original basic elements of African-American music: folk and jazz. William Levi Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony draws its inspiration from West African folk idioms, American Negro spirituals and early African-American folk rhythms and songs from Gullah culture. William Grant Still's Symphony No. 1 draws its influence from elements that were popular in jazz and pre-jazz. Although the latter is the more well-known figure in American music, Dawson was equally important in the timeline of African-American music, and his only published symphony is remarkably mature for a composer's first attempts at writing symphonically. This program also celebrates the centennial of George Walker's birth with the recording of his Lyric for Strings.
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