10 Contemporary Black Classical Composers
Here are 10 British and American living black composers whose music we’re listening to at the moment. We’ve made a Spotify playlist for you to dive into, featuring a piece by each of the composers mentioned here. We’ve included links to each composer’s profile on either Spotify or SoundCloud, and we encourage you to get stuck into their full discography. For further updates from us, follow @alterclassical on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, or sign up for our mailing list.
Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen CBE is the first black woman to have had a work performed at the BBC Proms. Commenting on this in The Guardian, she said: “it feels embarrassing to have to draw attention to the fact that there are still so few people of colour in the classical music industry.” Wallen recently presented BBC Radio 3’s A Racist Music, exploring the legacy of John Powell, a once-celebrated composer whose racist politics scarred the lives of generations of Americans. Wallen was awarded a CBE in 2020, an MBE in 2007, and in 2013 an Ivor Novello Award. She has penned 19 operas alongside choral symphonies, pop songs, piano solos and more, drawing on a range of influences including avant-garde classical music and popular songwriting.
Eleanor Alberga OBE
Herefordshire-based composer Eleanor Alberga was born in Jamaica in 1949. In 1970 she won the Royal Schools of Music Scholarship for the West Indies, which allowed her to study piano and singing at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Alberga’s dazzling and giddying String Quartet No. 1 was inspired by a lecture on physics and the fact that everything, including our own bodies, are essentially made of stardust. She claims as her influences 20th-century composers Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Harrison Birtwistle and Olivier Messiaen.
London-born composer Hannah Kendall (b.1984) has featured on BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week and won a Women of the Future award for arts and culture. Her music has been performed by a whole host of UK professional groups including London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Singers, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra. Kendall’s composition process starts with a graphic score, then she harmonises the structure at the piano and finally puts it all on the computer. Her piece The Spark Catchers, which she describes as ‘punchy, dynamic and full of kinetic energy’, was performed by Chineke! at the BBC Proms.
Daniel Kidane (b.1986) is a London-based concert composer whose music has been described by the Financial Times as ‘quietly impressive’. His works range from solo pieces to large orchestral works. Often drawing from experiences from his own background and upbringing, Kidane’s compositions explore social narratives, especially multilingual interactions in everyday life. Dream Song, which uses fragments of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, was premiered by Chineke! (the UK’s first majority BAME orchestra) and baritone Roderick Williams at the reopening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2018.
East Midlands-based composer Philip Herbert is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has taught music at all educational levels, as well as composing, performing as a pianist and conducting. He has coordinated masterclasses, workshops and concert series, and devised courses and community projects. Herbert says: ‘There is a need to place a higher value on the strength that comes from diverse peoples living together in Britain’. His piece Elegy: In Memoriam reflects on the story of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993.
Canadian composer and pianist Stewart Goodyear (b.1978) is the first and only black pianist to have recorded the complete Beethoven sonatas and concerti, and even performed all 32 sonatas in a single day (a marathon at around 10 hours of music). Goodyear says “the only way for classical music to remain vibrant and relevant is for artists to continue creating, thinking outside the comfort zone, reaching out to all audiences and cultures”. His Piano Sonata was composed as a response to the music he heard as a teenager, including Franz Liszt, techno music, smooth pop, Latin-infused dance, Canadian folk and rock ’n roll.
American composer, performer and media artist Pamela Z (b.1956) works with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. She has composed scores for dance, film, and chamber ensembles (including Kronos Quartet and Eighth Blackbird). Z’s most popular piece on Spotify, Bone Music is for voice, electronics and 5 gallon plastic water bottle. It layers a haunting, wordless melody and frenetic, processed chattering in an imaginary language over the polyrhythm of three boomy, percussive delay loops.
New York-born composer Nkeiru Okoye (b.1972) has had her music performed on five continents. As a child she spent time in both the US and Nigeria, learning to play the piano aged 8 and composing from the age of 13. Her genre-bending compositions reflect a dizzying range of influences: Gilbert & Sullivan, the Gershwins, Stephen Sondheim, Aaron Copland, Arnold Schoenberg, gospel and jazz. Her cycle Songs of Harriet Tubman has become established repertoire for African American sopranos; her Voices Shouting Out has been on statewide music education curricula with Virginia Symphony and Grand Rapids Symphony; and her suite African Sketches has been performed by pianists around the globe.
American composer and lecturer Adolphus Hailstork (b.1941) blend musical ideas from the African American and European traditions: he wrote Fanfare on Amazing Grace and Three Spirituals for Orchestra, based on Every Time I Feel the Spirit, Kum Ba Ya and Oh, Freedom. Born in Rochester, New York, Hailstork began his musical studies with piano lessons as a child, and then studied at Howard University and Manhattan School of Music. His teachers include French composer Nadia Boulanger, the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and Europe including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hallé, New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony.
American composer Jeffrey Mumford (b.1955) “has an unerring knack for fashioning rigorous works as changeable as cloudscapes, bursting with color, nuance and poetry” (New York Times). He has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, grants, awards and commissions, including a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He took private lessons with modernist composer Elliott Carter in New York, and has written two tributes in his memory. Mumford is currently Distinguished Professor at Lorain County Community College in Northern Ohio.
Image credits: Daniel Kidane by Kaupo Kikkas, Eleanor Albertga by Ben Ealovega, Philip Herbert by Mike Sewell, Stewart Goodyear by Anita Zvonar
Jayro Viapree is a freelance violist and vocalist. She studied Music at Middlesex University, where she wrote a dissertation on the effects that classical music traditions have on the audience experience.
Hannah Fiddy is a creative entrepreneur, developing new audiences for classical music. She has created numerous concerts outside of traditional spaces, including warehouses, pubs, clubs, museums, and even in Primark..