MICHELLE CANN

A “pianist of sterling artistry” (Gramophone) capable of “transmitting in every note a surprising calm and beauty” (Ear Relevant), Grammy Award-winner Michelle Cann makes her PPI debut with a program exploring Chicago’s Black Renaissance, a prolific period of artistic experimentation and community building that blossomed in the city’s South Side during the Great Migration.

Focusing on six of the movement’s women composers, Cann explores how each of these artists merged the romanticism of Brahms, Liszt, and the Schumanns with elements of Black musical idioms — including jazz, urban blues, gospel, and spirituals — to forge compelling musical worlds steeped in European tradition but quintessentially American in character.

FLORENCE PRICE Fantasie nègre Nos. 1, 2, 4

MARGARET BONDS Spiritual Suite

BETTY JACKSON KING Four Seasonal Sketches

IRENE BRITTON SMITH Variations on a Theme by MacDowell

NORA HOLT Negro Dance, op. 25, no. 1

HAZEL SCOTT Improvisation on Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor; Improvisation on Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2