đź“… Date: Friday, September 25, 2026
đź•’ Start Time: 4:00 PM
đź“Ť Location: Harkness Chapel, Classroom
đź‘Ą Who: Free | Open to the public
About The Series
Our weekly Friday colloquia showcase current research by distinguished visiting scholars alongside our own faculty and graduate students in musicology, historical performance practice, and music education. A brief reception follows each talk to keep the conversation going. All are welcome!
About The Talk
“A Family Affair: Florence B. Price and the Long Civil Rights Struggle”
The explosive posthumous re-emergence of composer Florence B. Price (1888–1953) into the international classical music spotlight has few historical parallels. This recent phenomenon has been well documented, but the conditions that enabled Price to attain extraordinary prominence during her own lifetime in a field openly hostile to African American musicians, especially women, have remained largely unexplored. Current accounts emphasize the relative affluence of her parents in Arkansas and the signal contributions of her artistic companions on Chicago’s South Side, where she resided between 1927 and her death. But there is an astonishing link between the two that my research is rapidly bringing into view: an intergenerational family history of direct involvement with civil rights activism that created the social networks in which she thrived. Beginning with the generation of Price’s grandparents, my paper demonstrates how this activism shaped a composer the world has come to love again.
About The Speaker
Douglas W. Shadle’s award-winning scholarship interrogates the roles played by symphony orchestras and orchestral music in American culture, past and present. Valuable for scholars and classical music lovers alike, his work has received coverage in major media outlets throughout the United States and Europe.
A leading authority on fellow Little Rock native Florence B. Price (1888–1953), the first African American woman to earn international acclaim for her compositions, Shadle is currently writing a biography of Price for Oxford University Press’s signature Composers Across Cultures series. From 2023 to 2025, Shadle served as principal investigator for a National Endowment for the Arts grant celebrating Price’s work as a composer, pianist, and educator with collaborative interdisciplinary performances in Nashville and Louisville, Kentucky. These performances included the world premiere of a newly commissioned “story-recital” for children written by poet–soprano Christine Jobson.
Bringing his interest in music criticism to a different type of scholarly venture, Shadle was co-editor, with John R. Schmidt, of A Portrait in Four Movements: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Barenboim, Boulez, Haitink, and Muti (Chicago, 2019)—a posthumous collection of the beloved Chicago Sun-Times critic Andrew Patner’s best reviews of the Chicago Symphony and interviews with its conductors.
Shadle has welcomed scholarly and artistic collaborations with a wide range of international performing arts organizations, including the Berlin Festspiele, BBC Proms, Hallé Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati May Festival, Tanglewood Festival, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Louisville Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Black Hills Symphony Orchestra, Shriver Hall Concert Series, President James K. Polk Home and Museum, and Nashville-based contemporary music groups Intersection and chatterbird.
He is currently Treasurer for both the Society for American Music and the International Florence Price Festival. As of 2024, he is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Musicological Research.
Venue Information
Harkness Classroom, located inside Harkness Chapel, serves as both a lecture hall for large classes and a backstage area during events. It is also the meeting location for the CWRU Music Colloquium Series.
Health + Safety
The health and well-being of our community is important to us as we gather for campus events. University Health and Counseling Services provides up-to-date guidance and resources to help support a safe campus experience. For life-threatening emergencies, please call CWRU Public Safety immediately at 216.368.3333.