The Life of Florence Beatrice Smith Price

Florence Beatrice Smith Price was born April 9, 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas to James and Florence Smith. Her father was a dentist and her mother had numerous careers working as a piano teacher, school teacher, and businesswoman. She had two siblings who both knew how to play the piano. Florence as well as her siblings, received music lessons from her mother who published some of her musical works. Price gave her first piano performance at the very young age of four. However, she did not write her first published composition until the age eleven; the other com positions were published while in high school. She graduated as valedictorian at the age of 14 from Capitol High School in 1903. She followed the footsteps of her mother and went on study at The New England Conservatory of Music, where she was only allowed to attend because she could pass as a Mexican. Despite racial issues Smith was able to forge all the right friendships with other African American composers who led her to the best of the best mentors. She was mentored by George Whitefield Chadwick and Fredrick Converse. There she earned and received her degree as an organist and a piano teacher in 1906.

Afterward her graduation from college, she returned to Arkansas to teach at Cotton Plant-Arkadelphia for one year then moved to teach at another college. She remained there until 1910, and then moved to Atlanta, Georgia to teach at Clark Atlanta in the music department until 1912. She lastly returned back to Little Rock, Arkansas where she married Thomas J. Price, a noted attorney. She gave birth to two children. One of the two children unfortunately died as an infant. The Prices moved away from Arkansas in 1927 after experiencing severe racial trauma due to a brutal lync...

... middle of paper ...

...d in titles of her shorter works: Arkansas Jitter, Bayou Dance, and Dance of the Cotton Blossoms.

Price died of a stroke on June 3, 1953, in Chicago, Illinois. It's believed that her musical contributions were soon overshadowed by the emphasis on more modernist composers who fit en vogue tastes. Many of Price's compositions were lost. Yet over time, as the work of African-American and female composers began to receive proper attention, her repertoire received new recognition. In 2001, The Women's Philharmonic issued an album of Price's work, and a recording of her "Concerto in One Movement" and "Symphony in E Minor" was released in December of 2011, performed by pianist Karen Walwyn and the New Black Repertory Ensemble. In February 2013, classical music figure Terrance McKnight of radio station WQXR, New York produced and hosted a retrospective on Price's career.