Classical pianist Althea Waites is not a household name the way Martha Argerich or Yuja Wang might be. With her 85th birthday fast-approaching at the end of this month, I get a sense that doesn’t matter too much to her. What matters is that she has long been an advocate of the work of Black female composers such as Florence Price and Margaret Bonds.
Waites first recorded Price’s music in 1987. When she takes to the stage of CAP UCLA’s The Nimoy on January 16th, she will perform work by both women and will be offering the first-ever performances of newly discovered and edited music by Price. The concert is called Momentum: Time and Space.
Momentum indeed. Last September Waites released her fourth album, Reflections in Time which found her performing music by Bonds, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Jeremy Siskind.
Last week I spoke with Waites about her passion for this music, the current embrace of music – particularly Price’s, and about whether or not she considers herself a trailblazer. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Waites, please go to our YouTube channel.
Q: You were one of the earliest proponents of the music of Florence Price, recording her work, I believe, in 1987. Did you imagine all that time ago that Florence Price would become one of the most performed composers in this decade?
I really did not. You start out on a project, but you don’t really know how it’s all going to end. I did a cassette recording. A friend of mine, who did the first biography on Price, sent me a copy of the manuscript from the Library of Congress. She said, Althea, this would be a wonderful piece for you to learn. I didn’t know anything about the Price sonata or any of the other music. So I got the manuscript and started working on it. I was in Switzerland at the time and when I got back to the States, I made that a primary project. Then in 1993 I did the first commercial recording of the sonata along with some other short pieces that Price had composed.
Why do you think now is the time that Price has suddenly been embraced by major orchestras around the world and also soloists?
We’ve been talking a lot and experiencing a lot about diversity and inclusion. I’m old enough to remember growing up in the segregated South where music was being performed and it was a part of the cultural landscape. But certainly Black composers, performers were relegated to very limited kinds of opportunities. With the civil rights movement, all of the LGBTQ actions that are taking place now, there is interest in Florence Price’s music.
In 2021, Classic FM had a list of the ten most important Black composers who changed the course of classical music history. There were only two women on the list: Florence Price and Margaret Bonds. What do you think their greatest contribution to classical music is?
They paved the way for traditional folk music that had been part of the Black experience to be included and to be recognized as a major component of that particular type [of music]. They were not away from doing European classical music or art music or the music of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc. because they were classically trained. They incorporated all of that into their music. Price used the dances that came out of slavery and out of the music of the plantations in the South. Bonds did the same thing. Because of their classical experience, they also merged that particular form with everything else that they were doing. I think that that was their major contribution.
They paved the way for other women. They opened doors really for women at that time – even in my generation – to get out and play and perform and teach a lot of this music. Both Price and Bonds were teachers and fierce advocates for inclusion at a time when it was hardly popular.
You’re also a teacher. Do you think the act of performance is a lesson in teaching for anybody who gets to hear it?
I totally agree. You can learn a lot, as I did just from listening to great artists and, of course, listening to it on the radio or television. A lot of my education, besides going to an academic institution, I went to concerts. My mother was a fierce advocate for having me experience all of that music.
We went to concerts in New Orleans, despite the fact that the large halls were not open to us. We heard the Met Opera every Saturday afternoon at 1:00. When I was old enough to read I would get the scores and follow along with whatever was going on. So teaching can happen in many ways, not just in a classroom. A lot of my education happened that way.
You can’t find a lot of quotes by Margaret Bonds. But I did find one where she is quoted as having said, “Music has to be human and people have to like it. It has to move them spiritually and intellectually.” Do you agree with her and how does her music move you?
I do agree. The whole idea is that people want to be moved by whatever it is that you do, whether you’re a pianist or if you play anything or if you’re a singer or whatever. If you cannot bring the emotional content to the experience that you have with your instrument, then I’ll say that you’ve fallen short of what your mission is. I think the primary mission is to move people emotionally so that when they walk out of the space, they say, wow, I heard something that really was special. I was really touched by that.
Does the music need to move you in order for you to play it?
Yes, I think so. I’m having that experience now with a couple of the things that I’m doing. There was a piece by Frederic Rzewski who was one of the primary exponents of social justice. He used a lot of those themes in his work. He wrote a piece called Down by the Riverside starting with [she sings] “I’m going to lay down my burden” and so on. Then in the middle of the piece it goes south. He takes a radical departure from the the tune that you’ve heard, which is very peaceful. All of a sudden you’re thrown into another world. That was the way he thought about it. At the end he brings all of that material back to the traditional tune. So, yeah, there must something in it, in any piece, that has to resonate with me. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Do you consider yourself a trailblazer? Somebody who has made it possible for younger generations who come up behind you to explore and make discoveries on their own of music, whether known or unknown?
I don’t want to pin any bouquets on myself. I mean, a lot of people have called me that. I say thank you. I appreciate that. What I believe is that whatever I have done in some small way, I’ll keep doing that. Whatever time I have left on the planet, I’m going to continue to support the younger generation. I don’t know if I would call myself a trailblazer. It’s nice to be thought of in that context, but, for me, it’s basically just doing the work. Doing some good work.
Quite some time ago there was a major discovery in Chicago in an apartment building that was being remodeled or a house that was being remodeled where they found a lot of Florence Price’s music, which helped further people’s awareness of Florence Price. Do you have optimism that maybe another miracle can occur and that we can find a lot more of this lost work somehow, somewhere?
I would think so, because people are really interested in it now. I do have to bring up at this juncture some work that a friend of mine, Michael Cooper [Professor of Music at Southwestern University], is now completing the first biography on Margaret Bonds. It was through him that I got these pieces that I’m going to premiere for The Nimoy concert.
Now he is a real trailblazer because Bonds lived in Los Angeles during the last 6 or 7 years of her life after Langston Hughes passed away. Michael has been doing research on where some of this music was. And I have a feeling that it’s going to happen with Price. He is also editing a lot of the music of Florence Price and he sends me things all the time about what he is working on. I owe him a great debt of gratitude because had it not been for him, I would not have known that these pieces exist.
What do you think the most important thing we as an audience can get from opening ourselves up to music?
I think what has to happen with audiences is let’s get rid of the fear, if you will. Or the apprehension that you may have in your mind about, well, I’m not going to like this. You don’t know until you try and until you actually have the experience. Audiences have to really, I think, do more. And I think we should do more as artists to make that case to say, here is something new. It’s not going to attack you. I feel that’s part of my mission – to get people in the space. That’s where I am. A lot of the people that I work with are trying to get people out to listen.
How does the music you’ve recorded and the music you are now playing reflect where you are in your life today and the journey you’ve taken to get here?
I’m not getting any younger. I was telling my daughter that I’m never going to be 25 again, and that’s okay. I have to do a lot of things now that reflect where I am. I’ll be 85 at the end of this month. I’m grateful to be able to still go on. My body is changing and I have to do more now to stay in good shape. So I walk and I have a lot of exercises that I do. I don’t sit at the piano for ten hours! I practice, but I do get up and take my breaks and with tea and things like that. The exercises really help because if you’re not doing anything like that, then you really can’t present your best self to an audience.
I would also argue that music is a really great way of staying alive.
Oh goodness, yes. We need it now more than ever. The whole world is in a very agitated state. There’s a lot of horrible stuff that’s going on. Music is, I think, probably one of the most important tools. You can bring people together with that. It’s not that you have to say anything, but you can speak through your music. I think that that’s what Price and Bonds attempted to do.
That’s what you are able to do by performing the music.
I feel very, very grateful now to still be able to do this at this point in my life. Anybody else would be sitting in a rocking chair watching soap operas. But not me.
To see the full interview with Althea Waites, please go here.