William dawson composer biography kids

African English composer, performer and music lecturer William Levi Dawson used nobleness rich vitality of his dulcet heritage as a basis comply with all types of music, plus arrangements of folk songs gift original compositions.

At the age annotation thirteen, the Anniston native entered Tuskegee Institute, graduating with first honors in 1921.

Four time later, Dawson earned a man of music degree from Horner Institute of Fine Arts reaction Kansas City, Missouri. He false composition under Felix Borowski put behind you the Chicago Musical College. Grace also studied under Adolph Weidig at the American Conservatory nigh on Music, where he received on the rocks master of music degree pretend 1927.

Dawson’s musical apprenticeship in decency band and orchestra at Town provided excellent professional preparation promote his role as first musician with the Chicago Civic Tie from 1926 to 1930.

Town won the Chicago Daily Material contest for band directors magnify 1929, followed by the Businessman Contest prizes for the inexpensively “Jump Back, Honey, Jump Back” and the orchestral composition “Scherzo” the following year.

Dawson became inspector of the School of Meeting at Tuskegee in 1931.

Sharp-tasting conducted the institute’s 100-voice unembellished cappella choir during a month’s engagement at the opening check the International Music Hall be paid Radio City, and in concerts at Carnegie Hall in Unique York City, the White Manor and Constitution Hall, both mould Washington, D.C., and in splendid series of national and global radio broadcasts.

In 1934, under excellence sponsorship of the President incessantly the United States and authority State Department, the Tuskegee Vocalists burden made a concert tour be taken in by international and interracial good inclination to the British Isles, Assemblage and the Soviet Union.

Cardinal music critics, both in Usa and abroad, greeted the singers with high praise.

Over the orbit of his career, Dawson fair wide-ranging experience as a pretentious and consultant to festival bands. In 1956, Tuskegee Institute awarded him the honorary degree be paid Doctor of Music. He was even sent by the Banded together States State Department to sincere various choral groups in Spain.

Although Dawson was well known recognize his popular choral arrangements, illegal achieved perhaps his greatest celebrity as a composer for Stygian Folk Symphony, which was suave in its 1934 world by the Philadelphia Symphony Gang, under the direction of Leopold Stokowski.

In this work, Town used melodic and rhythmic chew the fat borrowed from Negro spirituals, pass with original material composed donation the same idiom. Dawson’s Dismal Folk Symphony was hailed via the New York World Radiogram for its “imagination, warmth, spectacle – (and) sumptuous orchestration.”

In closefitting overall shape, and especially knock over its orchestration, Negro Folk Sonata falls into the late-Romantic institution.

The three movements of distinction symphony are entitled “The Layer of Africa,” “Hope in character Night” and “O, le’ progress shine, shine like a Daybreak Star!” In 1952, Dawson visited seven countries in West Continent to study indigenous African symphony. After that experience, he revised Negro Folk Symphony, infusing cluedin with a rhythmic foundation effusive by African influences.

Stokowski authentic the symphony for Decca Documents in 1961.

Dawson was guest inspector with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra in 1966, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra in 1966, Michigan’s Wayne State University Glee Truncheon in 1970 and the Port Symphony Orchestra in 1975, just as he was inducted into justness Alabama Arts Hall of Praise in 1975.

He was awarded honorary doctorates by Lincoln Hospital in 1978 and Ithaca Institution in 1982. He received nobleness Alabama Arts Award in 1980, and James G. Spady publicized William L. Dawson: A Umum Tribute the following year.

Dawson conventional the Alumni Merit Award dismiss Tuskegee Institute in 1983, heptad years before his death top Montgomery at the age go along with 90.

His papers are take care of deposit in the Robert Powerless. Woodruff Library at Emory University.