Pianist Josh Tatsuo Cullen has recorded an entire album of Florence B. Price‘s music for solo piano, specifically pieces that were discovered in 2009 at the composer’s summer home after her death.
“Scenes in Tin Can Alley: Piano Music of Florence Price” (Blue Griffin) was released on June 3.
The album includes the first commercial recording of several of Price’s compositions, including “Scenes in Tin Can Alley“, “Thumbnail Sketches of a Day in the Life of a Washerwoman”, “Village Scenes”, and “Cotton Dance”.
In the album’s liner notes, Cullen writes:
“I chose these works not only because they deserve to be heard, but because they spoke to me as an artist. As a person of mixed Japanese and European descent, I feel a strong connection to Price’s desire to honor and elevate the marginalized people of her own mixed-race heritage personified in Scenes in Tin Can Alley, Thumbnail Sketches of a Day in the Life of a Washerwoman, and Three Miniature Portraits of Uncle Ned.”
Josh Tatsuo Cullen
Is acclaimed for his “astounding mixture of coolness and intensity” (Stuttgarter Zeitung) and has been praised for his “delicious” collaboration by The New York Times. He has performed as solo and collaborative pianist at venues throughout the world.
His recordings include Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 2 and 3, and Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major with his mentor, Paul Badura-Skoda, all with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra led by Paul Freeman. At age nine he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major, K. 488 with the Moscow Philharmonic at Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, recording the work in studio the same week.
Cullen holds a master’s degree in piano from The Juilliard School, and a master’s degree in collaborative piano from New York University. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan at age 16.
Born in Hawaii and raised outside of Detroit, Josh Cullen proudly served in the United States Army for over a decade as an interpreter and interrogator.
Florence B. Price (1887–1953) is the first African-American woman to have an orchestral piece played by a major American orchestra: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her Symphony in E Minor in 1933. Born in Little Rock, Ark., and educated at the New England Conservatory, her career blossomed after she moved to Chicago in 1927. Her music received widespread recognition beginning in the 1930s. Price wrote over 300 works, and her arrangements of spirituals were often performed by Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price and other notable singers.