My name is Kedrick Armstrong.
I'm a second-year master's student in the orchestral conducting program,
originally from South Carolina.
The project is basically an edition of Irene Britton Smith's
“Sinfonietta,” which she wrote in 1956.
And the project came to be as I was in kind of a crux of my own personal life
in trying to figure out my position as a Black conductor and my responsibility in the
conversation of diversity, equity and inclusion
in the field of classical music and what I can do.
I was living in Chicago and I knew about the Center for Black Music Research
and kind of through that, found the Helen Walker-Hill Collection
here at CU Boulder and that kind of led to this entire discovery of
all of this music written by Black female composers.
And as an an orchestral conductor,
I knew that this was an avenue of music that just isn't greatly represented in our field
and so, to find kind of a treasure trove of music that hadn't even been
you know, discovered yet, to use lack of better words,
pieces that have never been performed, or published, or recorded,
was just kind of mind-boggling to me.
And in that collection, was this “Sinfonietta.”
I think at first listen, this piece might scare some people, right?
It's pretty thick, it's pretty thorny, it's pretty dicey.
But, with that, I do think that there are all of these nuggets in her music.
And I think this comes from her entire life work as an elementary school music educator.
So, I think there's always a part of her that is thinking about her audience
and thinking about, you know, sort of how to sort of grasp music
and how to teach music and how to convey music to an audience.
In the “Sinfonietta,” the entire three-movement work is based on
a two-note motive, right?
And as soon as you kind of hear that,
and as soon as someone points that out to you,
you can track that motive all throughout the piece
and even in the most complex moments of the music, right?
you can still at least grab on to that two-note motive.
I feel as someone who is trying to promote this music and give it to an audience,
that is what we hold onto, right?
It's getting beyond the fact that it's getting complicated, you know?
I think there is something to re-introducing
and continuing the conversation and the research
into these pieces that will hopefully,
even after the first listen, maybe on the fifth listen,
I can convince someone of the magic of this music.
*CU Symphony Orchestra string and percussion musicians playing*
You know, I think one of the things that has been the most kind of,
weird favorite parts for me, is looking at the pictures
of these composers.
And for me, the reason that is so important, because
growing up in communities of you know, in Black communities,
there was always this detachment from like what classical music was
and what who classical musicians were and who composers were.
And so, in the research of this music and hearing about the lives of these composers
and looking at their pictures and kind of seeing them in their, you know, day-to-day,
I'm like “Oh! This is like my mom or my aunt!”
The connection is just so much more immediate and so the advocacy feels even much more immediate
because I'm like, this is an entire community of people who were, you know, who I feel so akin to,
who were gatekept or pushed aside and so,
to be able to kind of see their images, has been one of the most like
you know, life-giving things to me and it continues to make me want to keep working on it.
Find something you love in this music and fight for it tooth and nail.
You know, and I think that is the greatest thing that I've held onto is
you know, it wasn't like everyone along this process was like
“Yeah! Irene Britton Smith! Let's do this! This will be great!”
And you know, I kind of drove my foot in the ground, and
and I think that is such a valuable thing in discovering and advocating for
any kind of music that isn't in the field—not in the canon.
Because, it's not in the canon for a reason and
if you believe it's supposed to be there, you have to find that reason
that you believe it and fight for it tooth and nail
and there will be people around you who believe in that.
*CU Symphony Orchestra musicians playing*