We are always delighted to hear from our listeners about their love and passion for music. The ways in which classical music accompanies everyday life, and how it transforms their lives seem to know no bounds. We were especially touched to hear long-time listener Maria Voultsides' journey of discovering the music of Florence Price on our airwaves, and learning more about her life on our Classical Breakdown podcast. Her discovery of Florence Price and her music led to an incredible story of how Maria installed a grave marker for Price's unmarked grave. Thank you for sharing your story, Maria!
WETA has enriched my life in so many ways. The heartbreak of losing WGMS was replaced by elation as I tuned in for the first time to the newly reformatted all-classical WETA at 8:00 p.m. on January 22, 2007. If my memory serves me correctly, the first piece played on the new WETA was Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Trumpets, and since that day, Classical WETA has given me countless hours of listening pleasure.
In more recent years, WETA took me down a path I never would have imagined.
I’m a life-long amateur classical pianist. Driving home one afternoon from a piano lesson, I was listening to WETA as was my habit, when an orchestral work came on that I couldn’t place. Usually, if I’m not familiar with a piece, I can correctly identify the composer, but this piece didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before. Curious, I waited until the end to find out who had written the piece, and the announcer attributed it to Florence Price.
I had never heard of Florence Price, so I read about her and found that she’d also written works for solo piano. Embarrassingly, even though I’m now in my 60’s and started playing piano when I was four, I’d never played a solo piano piece by a female composer. Florence Price seemed like a good place to start, so I decided to work with my teacher on one of her pieces.
I learned the Price piano sonata and put aside any further thoughts about her until the day I listened to a WETA podcast about her life. Dr. Karen Walwyn, a pianist, composer, teacher, and professor of music who is a specialist in the music of Florence Price, spoke about the challenges she had faced. Tragically, Price had been subjected to racial discrimination, domestic violence and abuse, and had struggled to make ends meet as a single mother of two daughters. Although she tried mightily to have her works performed, she couldn’t find conductors and orchestras that were willing to play music composed by a black woman.
Karen also revealed that after Florence Price died in 1953, she was buried in an unmarked grave in Chicago and that the grave still had no marker. I thought about this quite a bit and finally decided to contact Karen to see if I could help install a marker.
Karen was very gracious and generous in sharing information with me, and introduced me to Dr. Michael Cooper, an equally gracious and generous music professor in Texas who is also a champion of Florence Price’s music. Together, they gave me enough pieces of the puzzle to eventually track down Price’s grandson, who led me to the family’s representative, Devra Hall Levy. As it turns out, Devra was the person who negotiated with Schirmer on the family’s behalf, resulting in the publication of Price’s music, so I have Devra to thank for making it possible for me to purchase the sheet music to learn the Price piano sonata.
Devra mentioned that another person, Brian Johnson, who was also interested in placing a marker on the grave, had contacted her previously and had done some preliminary work, but they had lost contact. She reached out to him again to see if he was still interested, and he responded affirmatively. Brian had previously designed a marker and sent it to the family for approval, but apparently an email was missed and each side mistakenly concluded that interest had waned in completing the project.
In January 2023, Brian and I began working together on the project. The ground-level marker that Brian designed appealed to the grandchildren, and they selected a picture for it that they felt best captured their grandmother engaged in her work. There were a few twists and turns in dealing with the cemetery that are better left for another story, but in October 2023, 70 years after her death, a marker was placed on the grave of Florence Price to help visitors identify the final resting place of a composer who deserves recognition and remembrance.
In the scheme of things, placing a monument on an unmarked grave is a small gesture, but WETA served as the catalyst to get me to that point. It has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life, with no small thanks to WETA, and I am fully confident that I’ll continue learning and making new discoveries while tuned in to 90.9.
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