Throughout the history of Western classical music, there have been many compositional voices who have made enormous contributions to the musical landscape, who as a result of their race or gender, have been sidelined. The UNCOVERED project brings together the missing gems of the string quartet repertoire by composers Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. They each have contributed beautifully crafted work to the repertoire, but are not widely celebrated because recordings and performances of their music are rare or non existent. Despite this, each composer has his or her own incredible story and unique compositional voice, that exemplifies their individual struggles and triumphs as pioneers of black-art in a traditionally white environment. It is imperative that their stories are told, and that we hear all the voices that have shaped and contributed to classical music.
By the year 1935, Florence B. Price came to be known as the "Dean of Negro Composers of the Middlewest", a title in deference to "The Dean of American Negro Composers" William Grant Still. The title was attributed to her by the Chicago Defender for her numerous professional accomplishments, but also importantly, because she composed music with which African Americans could identify. Indeed, Price herself embraced her own heritage as a means of self expression, and much of her composing is rooted in a Black folk idiom, delivered through studied European techniques.