One Composer, One Community

One Composer, One Community, first launched at the Music Institute of Chicago in 2021, focuses on the life and work of a single underrepresented composer over the course of an academic year. 

This year, join the Music Institute of Chicago to celebrate and explore the music of Florence Price, a composer with over 300 works and roots as an artist and teacher in Chicago.

Price was the first Black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra (the CSO in 1933),  yet she struggled for recognition within her lifetime.

MORE ABOUT K-LOVE

K-Love the Poet is an international touring poet, speaker, and author. Shortly after her 2003 debut on the Chicago poetry scene, K-Love quickly gained notoriety in the genre of spoken-word. In 2007 she landed a feature on a Malik Yusef album produced by Kanye West. Since then she’s shared stages with likes of other note-able industry artists such as The Last Poets, J.Ivy, Talib Kweli, and Common Sense & Jasmine Sullivan, among others. 

With a social media presence of over 300k followers across social networks, national and international media publications have highlighted her career with well -known entertainers like Taraji P Henson, Fantasia, Black Thought, and Mary J. Blige sharing her work on their personal social media platforms. K-Love is regarded as a legendary mentor to many of Chicago’s emerging artists and is affectionately referred to as the “ Mother of the Southside” for her service and dedication to the youth through poetry. In October 2022, the humanitarian awardee was acknowledged with a lifetime achievement award as well as given the honor to speak for the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama via the Obama Foundation.

With this Collective, she is co-author of a book under contract with the University of Michigan Press, Black Song: A Manifesto for Music and Justice, which centers Black composers, musicians, and performers in U.S. history and culture. Dr. Lombré’s cultural commentary has been featured on NPR’s 1A with Jenn White; she has written for the award-winning 2023 Toledo Public Radio series, Conversations in African American Music with Dr. Louise Toppin; and from 2021-2023 was an official photographer for the internationally renowned Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) Great Black Music Ensemble.

The panel featured world-class scholars and interpreters of Price’s work, including Dr. Samantha Ege, award-winning researcher and musicologist and internationally recognized concert pianist; Dr. Louise Toppin, critically acclaimed operatic, orchestral, and oratorio performer and scholar on the music of African American composers; and Rachel Barton Pine, American violinist and Music Institute alum, who recorded Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries: 25th Anniversary Edition, which features Pine’s new recording of Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (2022).

The Music Institute of Chicago uses the power of music to educate, inspire, and bring comfort to the communities we serve.

Through our One Composer, One Community initiative, MIC partners with a composer and connects MIC student musicians of all ages and levels with their music.

In May 2020, nearly a hundred faculty and staff members gathered to reflect on how MIC could improve diversity and inclusion within our environment. A Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, facilitated by Trustees Carlos Cardenas and Barbara Sereda and comprised of a diverse representation of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and current families, formed. 

As part of this process, MIC developed the "One Composer, One Community" program, a curriculum and related performances relevant to and celebrating communities.

Each year, MIC focuses on the music of an under-represented composer that will be highlighted in MIC teaching studios and on stage at Nichols Concert Hall.