William Grant Still

William Grant Still achieved a number of firsts over a remarkable career. His Afro-American Symphony (1930) became the first symphony by a Black composer to be premiered by a major American orchestra; he was also the first Black musician to conduct a major American orchestra (the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 1936) and to have an opera produced by a major company (Troubled Island, by the New York City Opera in 1949). Born in Mississippi in 1895, he spent his early career as an arranger for W.C. Handy’s band and for musicians such as bandleader Paul Whiteman and clarinettist Artie Shaw. Still moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1934 and wrote for film and television while composing his first opera, Blue Steel. He would go on to write eight operas, five symphonies, four ballets, a range of symphonic poems and orchestral suites and a number of songs and choral works. He rejected the influence of spirituals in favour of the blues, the genre’s melodic and modal characteristics colouring much of his original music. The Afro-American Symphony, his first, remains his most popular work and serves as the ideal introduction to his music, which fell from favour in the years around his death in 1975, but has experienced a major revival of interest over the past three decades.