A LOOK BACK: KAPPA HISTORY
together.
can to have an opera, A Bayou Legend, televised over a national network (post- humous). Still is the first African American composer to have a work commissioned and performed for a regular sabbath eve synagogue service. That event occurred on May 10, 1946, at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City. Recognitions of Still’s Contributions to Music Still set many of the Harlem Renais- sance's great poets, including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen. Still received many accolades through- out the years. He won the prestigious Harmon Award in 1928. He was bestowed the Guggenheim (1934 and 1938) and Rosenwald Fellowships (1929 and 1940). On the Guggenheim Fellow- ship, he composed his first completed opera, Blue Steel. On the Rosenwald Fellowship, he composed a ballet and a piano composition. Of his best-known award-winning pieces were: Festive
Overture (1944) and To You America (1951). Still was awarded many other honors over the course of years. Twenty-one years after Still left college without acquiring his Bachelor’s degree, he was formally acknowledged for his accomplishments by his alma mater. Wilberforce University bestowed an honorary Master’s degree in music upon him in 1936. Still accumulated a total of eight honorary doctorates in music: How- ard University (1941), Oberlin College (1947), New England Conservatory of Music (1973), and the Peabody Institute of Music (1974). He also received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Bates College (1954), an honorary doc- tor of law degree from the University of Arkansas (1971), and an honorary doctor of fine arts degrees from Pepperdine University (1973) and the University of Southern California (1975). He also received several important com- positional commissions. In the 1930s, Still arranged popular music for two NBC radio shows. In 1936, the Colum- bia Broadcasting System (CBS) commis- sioned him to compose Lenox Avenue,
On October 29, 1931, Still’s Symphony no. 1 Afro-American became the first symphony composed by an African- American to performed by a major orchestra in the United States. It was performed at the Eastman School of Music by the Rochester Philharmonic. The piece subsequently premiered by New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1935. Still was also the first African American to conduct an all-white radio orchestra, a major American symphony (the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1936), and a major symphony orchestra in the Deep South (the New Orleans Philharmonic in 1955). One of eight operas Still composed, Troubled Island (1941), was the first op- era by an African American to be staged by a major opera company, the New York Opera Company, which presented its debut on March 31, 1949. It was based on a play by Langston Hughes.
In 1981, he was the first African Ameri-
Still with Paul Robeson and Earl Robinson at the Hollywood Bowl circa 1940s. Photo courtesy of the Music Center Archives.
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