Although many Arkansans have made their mark in the music history, this woman was an award-winning pianist and composer. Florence Beatrice Price was the first African-American women to have her work performed by a major symphony (Biography.com Editors). Florence Beatrice Price was born on April 9, 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her father, James H. Smith, was a dentist in Little Rock, and her mother, Florence Gulliver Smith, taught piano and was a schoolteacher and a businesswoman. Florence attended Capitol Hill School in Little Rock, and she performed her first piano performance at the age of 4. In 1903, she graduated from the same school as valedictorian. She then started studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts,…show more content… They had three children. One son, who died in infancy, and two daughters. Price started her own music school and continued to compose piano pieces. Because of her race, she was declined membership in the Arkansas State Music Teachers Association. In 1927, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when serious racial unrest erupted in Little Rock. Even though this move was where Price was able to reach her full musical potential, it came to an end with her marriage in 1935. Price soon studied at the American Conservatory of Music and the Chicago Musical College. Her compositions integrated the melody and rhythms of black culture, black religious spirituality, and European romantic moods and techniques. Florence taught music lessons, continued to compose for piano and organ, and worked as an orchestrator for WGN radio and as an organist for silent films throughout the rest of the 1930s (Price, Florence Beatrice Smith (1887-1953)). Florence Beatrice Price died on June 3, 1953, in Chicago, Illinois, of a stroke. It is thought that her musical contributions were soon obscured by the emphasis on more modernist composers. Many of Price’s works were lost. Over time, as the work of African-American and female composers began to receive proper attention, her repertoire received new identification (Biography.com
