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Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson

29 June 2022 Comments Off on Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson Interview to Katrin Szamaluski Views: 424 CE News

Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson Interview to Katrin Szamaluski

Earlier this year Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson gave an interview to Katrin Szamaluski of the Broken Frames Syndicate, when he talked about his musical trajectory. Jalalu talked about his first contacts with music since very young age:

I was surrounded by music at an early age. It all seemed so natural to me that I would soon try my hand at playing the piano. My aunt and grandmother encouraged me, and of course I was one of the millions of young people who watched Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on T.V. So many young people became musicians because of these broadcasts and I was one of them. Little did I know then that in a little over fifteen years later I would meet him at Tanglewood.

Going to his early musical education:

In Oklahoma City I was very fortunate to have had so much encouragement from my music teachers and also other professional musicians in Oklahoma City, by which I mean the white professional musicians in Oklahoma City. I attended many of the Symphony concerts by the Oklahoma City Symphony Orchestra. Led by a fine English conductor named Guy Frazier Harrison – he had exciting programs. In my all-Black high school we had great choirs, an orchestra, marching and concert bands, and the teachers programmed very exciting and current music of that time.

His experience at university and life as a Black composer:

I arrived on campus in June of 1969. I had really never met other young black students from out of state. They spoke and thought different to myself. They were from cities larger than Oklahoma City and they were mid-western blacks, not southern blacks. A different frame of mind. This was a new experience for me.

During that period I had the great unforgettable fortune to be there just before the music school presented the first “Black Music Conference”. This too happened as a reaction to the death of Dr. King the year before. This was a conference mainly of Black composers of classical music. Which was then a field of Black music largely overlooked. I met most of the great Black composers of the day, starting with the “Dean of Black Composers”, William Grant Still. And I met others, some of who became life-long friends – Hale Smith, Noel da Costa, Talib Rasul Hakim, George Walker and others. This event also gave me faith as a young black composer.

Jalalu-Kalvert also talks about the life changing encounters with his musical heroes, such as his aunt Verna, Duke Ellington, and Iannis Xenakis, and his current projects with Broken Frames ensemble and his trio ‘THE UNIT’.

Read the full interview here.

We at Composers Edition are so honoured to be part of Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson’s story by publishing and promoting his music.

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