CapRadio Classical and Jazz is celebrating women in music all month long by featuring a different classical composer every weekday. Today's spotlight is on Margaret Bonds.
- Margaret Bonds was born in 1913 into a home that was a meeting place for African American artists and intellectuals hosted by her mother, Estella, a gifted musician who gave Margaret her first music lessons.
- One of the later visitors to their home was Florence Price when she moved to Chicago in 1927 and became a dear friend to both Margaret and Estella and taught piano to Margaret during her high school years.
- Bonds was the first Black soloist to appear with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was the featured soloist in the Woman’s Symphony Orchestra of Chicago’s performance of Price’s single-movement Piano Concerto in D Minor (1934).
- She met poet Langston Hughes in 1936 and became a lifelong friend and collaborator, especially during the 1950s when she set many of his poems to music. Over 90% of Bonds’ music contains text, including her setting of “Credo” by W.E.B. Du Bois.
- In 1939 Bonds moved to New York City, where she attended Juilliard and became involved in the cultural life of the Harlem neighborhood where she lived. Bonds formed a Chamber Music Society of black musicians who performed black classical composers and helped to establish a community center and served as the music director at a local church.
- Bonds died in Los Angeles in 1972 at the age of 59.
Bonds’ final major work was Credo, a seven-movement cantata setting the 9-stanza text of “Credo” by W. E. B. Du Bois, his statement of belief in racial equality. The world premiere recording of Credo, released last month, is today’s Midday Masterpiece.
