Leading International Composers: A Celebration of the Music of George Walker
In-Person: Sold Out | Live Stream: $15 general, $10 members.
- Natalia Kazaryan, piano
- Seth Parker Woods, cello
- Andrew Rosenblum, piano
- Zachary Good, clarinet
George Walker — Cello Sonata
George Walker — Five Fancies for Clarinet and Piano Four Hands
George Walker — Bleu
George Walker — Violin Sonata No. 1
For the 2022/23 season of Leading International Composers, we present a concert-profile of composer George Walker (1922-2018). 2022 marks 100 years since Walker's birth in Washington, DC, a city he called home for much of his childhood. As an aspiring pianist in his early teens, Walker gave his first public recital at Howard University's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel before studying performance and composition at Oberlin College and the Eastman School of Music.
Walker was a trailblazer within the landscape of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American music. He was the first African-American performer to appear in performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the first African-American musician to receive a doctoral degree from Eastman. Walker’s many firsts are perhaps best captured by his singular achievement in 1996: the Pulitzer Prize for Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra.
Despite Walker's many achievements, much of his chamber music is not widely known. Cellist Seth Parker Woods, who curates this concert-profile, has made advocacy for Walker's music a central mission. Parker Woods brings together a stellar group of musicians for a portrait that explores several decades of Walker’s career and many sides of his musical development. Gregory Walker, George Walker's son, performs Bleu for unaccompanied violin (2011) and joins pianist Natalia Kazaryan for the Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano (1958). Parker Woods performs the Sonata for Cello and Piano (1957) with pianist Andrew Rosenblum. Clarinetist Zachary Good performs Walker's Perimeters (1966) and joins Kazaryan and Rosenblum in Walker's Five Fancies for Clarinet and Piano Four Hands (1975).