This program was supported by North Carolina Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. www.nchumanities.org

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this discussion series do not necessarily represent those of North Carolina Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

DR. QUINTON MORRIS

Dr. Quinton Morris enjoys a multifaceted career as concert violinist, educator, entrepreneur, and filmmaker. He is a Renton native and 1996 graduate of Renton High School. Growing up in a single-parent household, and as the only African-American student in his high school orchestra, Quinton has experienced firsthand the financial and cultural barriers that many students in South King County face when studying classical music. 

Quinton went on to study violin performance at a university and graduate level, culminating in a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He cultivated a successful career as a concert violinist including solo appearances with the Seattle Symphony, three consecutive years of sold-out recitals at Carnegie Hall, eleven years as Artistic Director of The Young Eight String Octet, and a TEDxSeattle talk on “The Age of the Artist Entrepreneur.” 

Presently he is the Associate Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at Seattle University and is one of two African American violin professors in the U.S. to receive tenure and promotion at the university level. 

In 2014 he embarked on a two-year BREAKTHROUGH World Tour during which he performed, lectured, and taught in over 25 cities across five continents with an emphasis on providing education and musical materials to under-resourced communities. The tour also featured screenings of Quinton’s short film The BREAKTHROUGH, which premiered at the Seattle Art Museum and the Louvre Museum in Paris, among other distinguished venues. Quinton directed and starred in the film, which tells a modernized story of the Chevalier de SaintGeorges: a musician of African origin who, against all odds, rose to become one of the most prolific and forgotten figures of the 18th century. The film won the first place Diamond Award for Best Picture and Visual Effects in the European Independent Film Awards and the Bronze Award at the Global Music Awards in Los Angeles. It was also featured in New York Film Week and the Las Vegas LiftOff Film Festival. 

After returning home, Dr. Morris founded Key to Change in 2016 with the mission of giving back to his community, inspiring the next generation of young violinists, and building a richer, more diverse cultural landscape in South King County. Key to Change currently serves over 150 violin and viola students in South King County. 

BILL BARCLAY

Hailed a “personable polymath” in the London Times, Bill Barclay was Director of Music at Shakespeare’s Globe from 2012-2019 producing music for over 120 productions and 150 concerts. Original scores include Hamlet Globe-to-Globe to every country in the world, Emilia, Edward II, Romeo & Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Pericles and Comedy of Errors. A director, composer, writer and producer, he is the Artistic Director of Concert Theatre Works.

Broadway and West End credits include: Farinelli and the King, Twelfth Night, and Richard III, all starring Mark Rylance. A passionate advocate for evolving the concert hall, he has created works of concert theatre for the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, and annually with The Boston Symphony Orchestra (Peer Gynt, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Magic Flute, L’Histoire du Soldat).

As a composer, Bill Barclay’s original music has been performed in 197 countries and 42 US states, for President Obama, the British Royal Family, for the Olympic Torch, at the United Nations, in Buckingham Palace, and in refugee camps in Jordan and Calais. He is the founder of the label Globe Music, recognized by the BBC, The Royal Philharmonic Society and Songlines (Top of the World, 2016), with releases featuring Ian Bostridge and Soumik Datta.

Barclay recently created a new Four Seasons Recomposed for Max Richter on period instruments with the puppetry masters Gyre & Gimble. In 2019, he composed four new productions for the Globe, directed his immersive work for Washington National Cathedral, conducted his new album, King of Ghosts, on tour with City of London Sinfonia, directed the Grammy-winning Silk Road Ensemble with Heroes Take Their Stands, and directed his original Antony & Cleopatra with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra at the Virginia Arts Festival.

An arts and culture writer for the Guardian, Bill recently published Shakespeare, Music, and Performance for Cambridge University Press, and The Jon Lipsky Play Anthology for Smith & Kraus. He lectures widely on the music of the spheres and is a leading international voice on Shakespeare’s music. He is a contributor to a forthcoming book on Shakespeare’s music with Oxford University Press in 2020.

DR. ALEXANDER BLAKE

Dr. Alexander Lloyd Blake works as an award-winning conductor, composer/arranger, vocal contractor, singer, and music activist. Named Musical America’s 30 Professionals of the Year in 2019 and the Louis Botto Award for Innovative actions and Entrepreneurial Zeal from Chorus America, Blake was recently featured in both the NY Times and LA Times for work in diversity and anti-racism within classical music.

Blake is the Founding Artistic Director of Tonality, an award-winning choral ensemble focused on spreading a message of unity, peace, and social justice through a culturally diverse choral setting. He also serves as the Choir Director at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). He also serves in Los Angeles and New York City as a Principal Associate Conductor of the National Children’s Chorus. As an arranger, Blake’s “Wade in the Water”was a featured arrangement at the North Carolina Music Educators Association convention in 2013 and is published with Santa Barbara Music Publishing. His arrangements of “Deep River” and “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” are published by Alliance Music Publishing and Walton Music Publishing, respectively.  Other musical activities include an opera conducting premiere at the 2019 Prototype Festival in New York City and preparing choirs for live performances with UCLA Center for the Art of Performance.

Recent film and TV credits include singing on the soundtrack of Jordan Peele’s “Us”, Disney’s “Lion King”, and Pixar’s “Spies in Disguise.” Blake also worked as the choral contractor and vocal arranger for Andy Grammer’s performance at the 2019 ARDYs (Radio Disney Awards). Blake recently prepared singers for the 2020 Grammy Awards and performed at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Blake completed the Doctorate in Musical Arts degree at the University of Southern California in 2019. He completed the Master of Music degree at the University of California Los Angeles in 2014 and the Bachelor of Arts degree (cum laude) in Vocal Performance at Wake Forest University in 2010.

A. KORI HILL

A. Kori Hill is a PhD Candidate from Cincinnati, Ohio. Her dissertation, “A Creation of Tradition: New Negro Modernism in the Concertos of Florence B. Price,” studies Price’s three concertos as examples of Black/New Negro music modernism to further contextualize Price’s style within American classical and Black cultural aesthetics. Kori has presented at the Society for American Music, FT&M17, MTSU Opera and Musical Theory Conference, The Arts in the Black Press in the Era of Jim Crow, and regional conferences in the Chapel Hill area. In November 2019, she gave the keynote address for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s “Celebrating Florence Price” event. Her review, “Florence Price: Violin Concertos” was published in the Journal of the Society for American Music and her review of Naomi André’s Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement is forthcoming. From July 2018 to late 2020, Kori was the Director of Social Media for The Harry T. Burleigh Society. She has bylines in The Harry T. Burleigh Society Blog, I Care if You Listen, and the Seattle Symphony. In addition to her work on Price, Kori also studies modernist aesthetics, networks of Black classical musicians, and music as method for cultural theorizing. She holds a M.A. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a M.M. in music history and violin performance from West Virginia University, and a B.M. in violin performance from Miami University (of Ohio!).

ER-GENE KAHNG

Er-Gene Kahng is a violinist, researcher and educator whose work came to the fore through her advocacy of African-American composer, Florence Price.  Her recording of Florence Price’s Violin Concertos (Albany Records, 2018) has been cited and praised by sources such as The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and The New York Times as an important contribution to American classical music, and has aired on programs like NPR’s Songs we Love, and APM’s Performance Today.  Alex Ross, in The New Yorker states:

“Kahng’s new recording of the Violin Concertos with the Janáček Philharmonic, is Price’s best outing on disk to date. Kahng plays the solo parts with lustrous tone and glistening facility….The second concerto, which Price wrote in 1952, shortly before her death, begins with jarring chords of D major and F minor, establishing unstable harmonic terrain. The hyper-Romantic solo part now seems like a visitor from another world. This terse, beguiling piece has an autumnal quality reminiscent of the final works of Richard Strauss. It deserves to be widely heard.”

​Er-Gene serves as concertmaster with the Fort Smith Symphony, who completed a world premiere Florence Price recording of her Symphonies no. 1 and no. 4 in 2019, and the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra’s concertmaster, where she premiered Florence Price’s Violin Concerto no. 2.  Er-Gene is also a member of Chineke!, the first majority BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) orchestra in Europe, whose motto is “championing change and celebrating diversity in classical music.” Previously, Er-Gene has held title positions with the North Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, SoNA (Symphony of Northwest Arkansas), Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, as well as section positions with the Lancaster Symphony, New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Eastern Connecticut Symphony and the Artosphere Festival Orchestra. Her other collaborations have included co-curating a new music series “Fuse” (at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), Texas Ballet Theater, the Hong Kong Arts Academy, performances with Norfolk Symphony Orchestra (UK), Portland-Columbia Symphony, Camellia Symphony at venues such as the Esplanade Theatre in Singapore, and the Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall.

​Er-Gene serves as Professor of Violin, and the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. She is a Board member of the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, President of the APA (Asian Pacific Americans) Employee Impact Group, and co-Artistic Director of the pierrot+ new music group, Khemia Ensemble. She was a Visiting Wolfson Fellow at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, UK, and received degrees from UCLA, Yale and Northwestern. 

NATHAN ROSS FREEMAN

Nathan is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Authoring Action’s Just Us program, agency of the Forsyth County, NC. Juvenile Justice Program. From 2013 to present court appointed teens convert monologues into scripts and script into films. In collaboration with Professional designers and crews they co-directed over 60 festival grade short films over the course of 14 semesters. Their graduation is the screening of their films at Aperture Theater, Winston Salem NC.

Nathan’s fiction, non- fiction and scriptwriting lectures include Characterization: Layers Of Self, Advocate Writing, Screenwriter as Filmmaker.  Nathan served as a member of the Intensive Writing Faculty teaching Screenwriting and Playwriting at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for 14 years (1994-2008). He was awarded Salem College’s Visiting Writer (2009) where he taught Upper Level Screenwriting, Beginning and Intermediate Poetry and Creative Writing. 

Nathan Ross Freeman’s feature films Mr. Bones, Authoring Action Documentary and Gem Feature Films have screened in over 40 national and international film festivals, won 7 first place awards, 7 invitations.  Screening locations include NYC, Atlanta, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Nashville, Charlotte, Los Angeles, Austin, Chattanooga, Toronto, London, Tokyo, Wales, Amsterdam, Sydney. South Africa, Ireland, Liberia.

JASON S. MCKINNEY

Milwaukee Native and Graduate of UNCSA Music School, Mr. McKinney has performed at such prestigious venues as The Kennedy Center, The White House, Preservation Hall in New Orleans, The Semper Opera House in Dresden Germany, The Hamburgische Staatsoper, and many other opera houses and concert halls in North America, Europe, Africa, The Middle East and Australia.

 Notably Mr. McKinney has performed the title role in “Porgy and Bess” with the Skylight Music Theater, and has also performed that opera with the Chicago Lyric Opera, and on many international tours.   As a concert vocalist and clarinetist Mr. McKinney performs various musical styles from the Baroque period to 21st century premiers. 

When not on the stage Mr. McKinney sings as a guest Cantorial Soloist in synagogues throughout the USA, and is also a professional composer of sacred and secular music.  He has created and performed biographical musical dramas about Paul Robeson and Frederick Douglass, and has portrayed other notable members of American history such as, John P. Parker, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster and Malcolm X.  

WILLIAM HENRY CURRY

William Henry Curry was appointed Music Director and Conductor of the Durham Symphony on May 7, 2009. For twenty years Maestro Curry was the Resident Conductor and Summerfest Artistic Director of the North Carolina Symphony. He came to the North Carolina Symphony by way of New Orleans where he served as Resident Conductor of the New Orleans Symphony.

A native of Pittsburgh, Curry started conducting and composing music at age 14. His first major appointment was at age 21 when he was named Assistant Conductor of the Richmond Chamber Orchestra. On the same day, he was called in to replace a conductor who suddenly became ill for a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Maestro Curry’s unexpected debut was hailed by the critics and audience alike. He went on to serve as Resident Conductor with the Baltimore Symphony for six years (1978-1983) and with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for two years (1983-1985).

Maestro Curry was appointed Associate Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony in 1983, a post he held until 1988, the same year he was named winner of the Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition and performed in Carnegie Hall. He was feature conductor for the tour and recording of Anthony Davis’s Grammy-nominated opera X. He has also conducted opera productions with the New York City Opera, the Houston Grand Opera and the Chicago Opera Theatre.

Maestro Curry has conducted over forty orchestras, including appearances with the Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, National, Detroit, Denver, American and San Diego symphonies and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In November of 1997 he made his debut in Israel with the Israel Camerata Jerusalem orchestra; he has also conducted orchestras in Bangkok and Taiwan. In the 2002-03 season he made appearances as guest conductor with the Indianapolis, Detroit, and New Jersey orchestras. He made his conducting debut in December 2002 with the New York City Ballet in their famed Balanchine production of The Nutcracker. Guest conducting reengagements include a return to the Indianapolis Symphony and the New York City Ballet, as well as debut performances with the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Maestro Curry is also a composer, and his works have been played by many of America’s finest orchestras. On June 13, 1999, the Indianapolis Symphony premièred his work, Eulogy for a Dream. This work, based on the speeches and writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a tremendous success and received a standing ovation. This piece was broadcast nationally in January 2000 on the National Public Radio program Performance Today.

Maestro Curry is also committed to new music and has conducted premières by, among others, Schwantner, Bolcom, Foss and Hailstork. The range of artists Maestro Curry has worked with in his career run the gamut from Zubin Mehta and Aaron Copland to John Williams and Ella Fitzgerald. In addition, he has been a beacon for promising young musicians both as an instructor at the Peabody Conservatory and the Baltimore School for the Arts, and as a mentor.