Media
Outcast 2: A New Beginning (video game, 2023)
Orchestration team for composer Lennie Moore. Developer: Appeal. Publisher: Bigben Interative.
Snatching Love (short film, 2021)
Composer, club scene merengue. Director and writer: Arly Flores.
Sun Valley Music Festival (virtual music festival, 2020)Orchestral audio editor.
Symphonic
Awash (2022)
audio
Symphonic meditation on water and light in the San Francisco Bay Area. 11.5 min.
Fughetta (2015 rev. 2018)
audio
Symphony orchestra. 3.5 min.
Prelude to Rainbow Crow (2015)
Ballet opening scene. Chamber strings, winds, perc. 4 min.
Hybrid Acoustic–Electronic
Luminous Memories (2020)
audio
,
Luminous Angels (2019)
audio
Hybrid orchestral trailers for a mock undersea action/adventure game. Each 2 min.
Mostly Cowbell (2019)
audio
Found-sound, cross-globe collaboration with my husband on travel in Austria. 4 min.
Chamber
Three Spaces for 9 Clarinets (2022)
video
Comissioned by the Helia Music Collective and Jeff Anderle for the SFCM Clarinet Ensemble; premiere March 23, 2022. 7.5 min.
Airwaves for Physically Distanced String Quartet (2020)
video
Written for remote performance during the 2020 pandemic; premiered by the Friction Quartet using Streamyard. 5 mvmts, 9 min.
Study, 'O Magnum Mysterium' for String Quartet (2020)
video
Just a shimmer of de Victoria's choral masterwork. 5 min.
Album
Coming Soon — Project in Progress (2023)
Very excited to have completed sessions with five wonderful musicians over at 25th Street Recording in Oakland. Watch this space or check my instagram feed for updates.
Choral
Metamorphoses: The Creation (2015, rev. 2021)
video
Ovid's creation story for six voices and Persian daf. Latin. 7 mvmts, 18 min.
What We Are (2019)
audio
text
Musings on Homo sapiens for SATB choir and 3 soloists. English. 3 mvmts, 10 min.
Shalom / Pax / Salaam (2018)
audio
Traditional greetings of peace in Hebrew, Latin and Arabic. SATB. 1 min. Third prize, San Francisco Conservatory of Music Biennial Choral Composition Competition.
Lullaby (2015)
audio
text
7-voice lament and reconciliation with loss. English. SSAATTB. 4.5 min.
Opera
American Music: The Rediscovery of Florence Price (2019)
audio
text
Chamber opera-in-miniature. 2 soprani, tenor, and piano quartet. English. 12 min.
Songs
Vocalises I–III (2022)
video
Songs without words for solo voices and cello. Premiere Oct. 2022 by soprano Winnie Nieh, mezzo Nikola Printz, bass-baritone Sidney Chen, and cellist Doug Machiz. Approx. 3 min. each
Morning Star (2021)
video
text
Original text and song for tenor & piano. Premiere Dec. 2021 by tenor Jonathan Smucker and pianist Monica Chew. 3.5 min.
Beyond the Shoe (2019)
audio
Nursery-rhyme-inspired art song. Tenor & piano. Collab. with poet Roberto Rodriguez. 3 min. 2nd prize, San Francisco Conservatory of Music Biennial Art Song Competition.
Let darken now the sun-bright day
And close your eyes in silence.
Heavy remembrance, fall away.
Sleep now.
Rest you now.
The deepest night that all obscures
Envelop you in sable soft.
Cradled in kind forgetfulness
Sleep now
And be at peace.
In quiet slumber, numb to all
Dreamless rest and timeless sleep.
Ponderous breath, let fall away.
Sleep now.
Rest you now.
Sleep now
And be at peace.
— for L. J. D.
S. A. Workman, 2015
Roles
Florence Price, soprano
Discoverer 1, soprano
Discoverer 2, contralto or tenor
Instrumentation
violin, viola,
cello, piano
for Chasiti Lashay Walker,
the inspiration for this piece,
and Jasmine Johnson and Auburn Joseph
with admiration and gratitude
Introduction
In 2009, two property renovators began work on a neglected home south of Chicago.1,2 A protected corner of the attic yielded a curious discovery: a sizeable collection of books, personal correspondence and musical manuscripts. In neat lettering on the carefully hand-inked sheet music, one name appeared again and again: Florence B. Price. A quick internet search identified composer Florence Beatrice Smith Price (1887-1953), the first African-American woman to have her music played by a major U.S. symphony. The University of Arkansas added the rediscovered materials to their existing Florence Price collection, making newly available several works that had been thought lost, including her fourth symphony and two violin concertos.3
The present 12-minute chamber opera was inspired by Price’s life and music, and the gentle dignity and determination reflected in her letters. In a fictional reimagining of the 2009 discovery, this work quotes one of several letters that Price wrote to Boston Symphony Director Serge Koussevitzky, asking him to consider her work.4 Koussevitzky was an important force in the development of American symphonic music, helping to promote the work of Aaron Copland, among others, and programming as many as one-hundred new American works over the years 1924–1946.5,6
1. Micaela Baranello, “Welcoming a Black Female Composer Into the Canon. Finally,” The New York Times,
February 9, 2018.
2. Alex Ross, “The Rediscovery of Florence Price: How an African-American Composer’s Works Were Saved from
Destruction,” The New Yorker, February 5, 2018.
3. Florence Beatrice Smith Price, Papers: Correspondence, Musical Scores, and Other Papers, 1906-1975 and
addenda (Manuscript Collections 988, 988a, 988b). Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas
Libraries. Accessed July16, 2018. https://libraries.uark.edu/specialcollections/findingaids/price.html, https://libraries.uark.edu/specialcollections/findingaids/ead/transform.asp?xml=mc988a, https://libraries.uark.edu/specialcollections/findingaids/ead/transform.asp?xml=mc988b.
4. Florence Beatrice Smith Price, Personal correspondence to Serge Koussevitzky. Serge Koussevitzky Archive,
Music Division, Library of Congress, as quoted in Florence Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3, eds. Rae Linda Brown
and Wayne Shirley (Middleton: A-R Editions, Inc., 2008), xxxv.
5. Leon Botstein, “On Conductors, Composers, and Music Directors: Serge Koussevitzky in Retrospect,” The
Musical Quarterly 86, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 583-590.
6. Hugo Leichtentritt, “About this Book,” Serge Koussevitzky, The Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the New
American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947).
Music and text copyright Shawne A. Workman, 2019. Quotes from Mrs. Price's letters included under academic fair use as part of the thesis for the Master of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 2019.
Bars 23–28 of the work:
SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN E MINOR
Florence B. Price
Copyright © 2018 by G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP)
This arrangement © 2019 by G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP)
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
Used by Permission.
Bars 33–39 of the work:
SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN C MINOR
By Florence B. Price
Copyright © 2018 by G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP)
This arrangement © 2019 by G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP)
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
Used by Permission.