Drawing upon a mix of research and the personal experience of a career devoted to the music about which Dvorák so presciently spoke, this book's narrative goes behind the scenes of the burgeoning American school of music and beyond. The book begins with Dvorák's three year residency as Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York (1892-5), and his students, in particular Will Marion Cook and Rubin Goldmark, who would in turn become the teachers of Ellington, Gershwin, and Copland. The book follows Dvorák to the famed Chicago World's Fair of 1893, where the book brings to light th ... More

Drawing upon a mix of research and the personal experience of a career devoted to the music about which Dvorák so presciently spoke, this book's narrative goes behind the scenes of the burgeoning American school of music and beyond. The book begins with Dvorák's three year residency as Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York (1892-5), and his students, in particular Will Marion Cook and Rubin Goldmark, who would in turn become the teachers of Ellington, Gershwin, and Copland. The book follows Dvorák to the famed Chicago World's Fair of 1893, where the book brings to light the little known African American presence at the Fair: the piano professors, about-to-be ragtimers; and the gifted young artists Paul Dunbar, Harry T. Burleigh, and Cook, who gathered at the Haitian Pavilion with its director, Frederick Douglass, to organize their own gala concert for Colored Persons Day. The author of this book, a distinguished conductor, is himself a part of this story; working with Duke Ellington on the “Suite from Black, Brown and Beige” and his “opera comique”, Queenie Pie; conducting the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass; and reconstructing landmark American concerts at which George Antheil's Ballet Mècanique, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, James Reese Europe's Clef Club (the first all-black concert at Carnegie Hall), and Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige, were first presented. The book concludes with a look at Ellington and his music.