Price: Symphony No. 3, The Mississippi River & Ethiopia's Shadow in America

Florence Price was one of the most versatile and accomplished American musicians of her generation whose unstoppable creativity and earliest successes were set against the backdrop of 1930s economic depression. The Third Symphony expresses aspects of Price’s cultural heritage in a symphonic framework. Avoiding direct references to existing folk songs and dances, it creates highly distinctive African spiritual moods and uses the syncopated rhythms of the Juba in its jazzy third movement. This world premiere recording of Ethiopia’s Shadow in America traces the American experience of enslaved Africans, while The Mississippi River suite quotes several famous spirituals, capturing the struggles of Black migration across the United States.