Category: Kira Thurman

  • Classically Black, V: Playlists for “Playing Beethoven in the #BlackLivesMatter era” by Kira Thurman and”Home” by Langston Hughes

    Read Kira Thurman’s article “Playing Beethoven in the #BlackLivesMatter Era” here (also in your course reading packet). Below you will find videos of the pieces Dr. Thurman references in her essay. 1. Johann Baptist Vanhal’s Concerto in D Major, which Kira Thurman imagines Draylen Mason playing: Two of the pieces Kira Thurman played for her…

  • Classically Black: Against the Grain

    In 2018, the city of Austin, Texas was terrorized by a bomber who, over the course of two weeks in March, murdered two people, and injured several more, with homemade bombs sent through the mail to residents of communities of color. One of the dead was a 17-year-old classical musician, Draylen Mason, the only black…

  • Sounding “White”

    Throughout 2018, the New York Times has been running a series of stories called “Overlooked,” which are the obituaries of notable women from the past who the paper declined to acknowledge at the time of their deaths. In August, the Times published an overdue obituary for Sissieretta Jones, the first black opera singer to appear at Carnegie…