• Undine Smith Moore (1904–1989) trained as a classical pianist but was drawn to vocal music.

• As a composer and arranger Moore wrote numerous choral works, many of them inspired by African spirituals and folk music. 

• Of her over 100 compositions, only 26 were published in her lifetime. 

• "Scenes from the Life of a Martyr," her 16-part choral cantata based on the life of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1981 and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

• Moore became known to some as the Dean of Black Women Composers. She taught at what is now Virginia State University for over 40 years where she also co-founded the Black Music Center which aimed to educate about the “contributions of Black people to the music of the United States and the world.”

For further exploration of Moore’s accomplishments, try these links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undine_Smith_Moore 
https://smtd.umich.edu/ami/gershwin/?p=10714 

• Zenobia Powell Perry (1908–2004) was an American composer, professor and civil rights activist. 

• She studied music under African-American composer William L. Dawson at the Tuskegee Institute, after which Perry became part of a black teacher training program headed by Eleanor Roosevelt who would become a mentor and friend to Perry and even helped sponsor her graduate studies. 

• Though she didn’t begin writing her own music until the 1950s, she was prolific, including an opera about the Underground Railroad titled “Tawawa House” that premiered in 1987 but didn’t have a fully staged performance until Townsend Opera of Modesto (now Opera Modesto) revived the work in 2014.

There is so much more to learn about Zenobia Powell Perry; here are a couple websites to get started:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenobia_Powell_Perry
https://www.jeanniegaylepool.com/zenobia-powell-perry-1

Also today: Beethoven's only Violin Concerto had an unsuccessful premiere then languished, unplayed, until decades after Beethoven’s death in 1827. It wasn’t until Felix Mendelssohn conducted it in London in 1844 that the Concerto became a standard in the violin concerto repertoire. That performance featured the 12 year old violinist Joseph Joachim who would later become perhaps the greatest violinist of the 19th century and friend of Johannes Brahms who composed HIS only Violin Concerto in collaboration with Joachim to whom Brahms dedicated it. The first of those two great concertos that Joachim had a hand in creating or, in this case, reviving, the Beethoven Concerto, is today's Midday Masterpiece.