Andante Con Espressione for violin and piano; Florence Price (Schirmer)

Andante Con Espressione for violin and piano; Florence Price (Schirmer)

• This is a print-on-demand edition and will have the date of printing on the cover.

Florence Price (1887-1953) was an American composer and an influential figure in Chicago's Black Renaissance. Born and raised in Arkansas, she enrolled at Boston's New England Conservatory at age 15 and showed incredible promise. She eventually moved to Chicago, where she wrote most of her works and became the first African-American woman to be programmed by a major orchestra.

In 2009, a substantial catalogue of her compositions was rescued from an abandoned Illinois house slated for demolition. Since then, her music has rapidly re-entered the wider classical canon. Beautifully romantic and infused with the rich cultural heritage of African-American idioms, her music represents an integral part of America's musical history and, as Alex Ross of the New Yorker asserts, ''deserves to be widely heard.''

Price's Andante con espressione for violin and piano dates from 1929, during her first flowering of mature compositional output. It is short yet incredibly varied, displaying rich chromatic harmony and beautiful cantabile melody. For intermediate and early advanced violinists. Edited by John Michael Cooper.