Samantha Ege

A blend of performance and storytelling, this programme begins with Gabriela Ortiz’s Preludio y Estudio no. 3. The piece is a colourful and rhythmic homage to the women who fought in the Mexican Revolution. From Mexico to the UK, Doreen Carwithen’s Molto Adagio from her Sonatina and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Andante from his Three-Fours Valse Suite bring moments of plaintive reflection. This year also marks 150 years since Coleridge-Taylor’s birth, and his musical influence is felt in the African American folk melodies and lush Romanticism of Florence Price’s Fantasie Nègre no. 2 in G minor. The programme ends as it began: with a fiery contemporary work that uplifts women’s stories. Commissioned by Samantha Ege to celebrate the women in her latest book South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Scene, Cuban fusionista Camila Cortina Bello’s Bravura tells the story of Florence Price’s musical sisterhood on Chicago’s South Side.