Gwynne Brown is a distinguished professor of music at the University of Puget Sound. Her talk is titled "William L. Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony: Complicating the Narrative of Rediscovery."
Abstract
Since 2020, William L. Dawson’s brilliant Negro Folk Symphony has been performed dozens of times, recorded professionally by several orchestras, and received a new edition from G. Schirmer. While celebrating the long overdue recognition of a work premiered to great acclaim in 1934 and then plunged into obscurity, this talk complicates the recurring narrative of Dawson as a tragically thwarted Black composer who would have followed his singular masterpiece with more symphonies if not for the classical music establishment’s past racism.
Biography
Gwynne Kuhner Brown, professor of Music at the University of Puget Sound, delights in creating inclusive and inspiring music courses for all Puget Sound students, regardless of major or background. Her teaching seeks to foster creativity, curiosity, compassion, alertness to inequity, and meaningful human connections. She is a musicologist whose current research focuses on the African American composer and educator William Levi Dawson (1899-1990).