Anna Priscilla Risher

Last updated

Anna Priscilla Risher (November 2, 1875 - August 29, 1946) was an American composer, organist, pianist, later a painter as well.

Contents

Early life

A native of Dravosburg, Pennsylvania, [1] Risher first studied music with William Wallace Gilchrist and Alexander Matthews. [2] She attended the Pennsylvania College for Women, undertaking further studies at the New England Conservatory of Music; at the latter, her instructors included Adolph M. Foerster, Carl Stasny, George Whitfield Chadwick, and Leo Schultz. [3] Returning to Pittsburgh, she worked as an organist at such venues as the East Liberty Presbyterian Church and Bethany Lutheran Church, and taught music as well; among her pupils was Charles Wakefield Cadman. [1]

Risher's family moved to California in 1918, and she became the director of music at the Cumnock School for Girls in Los Angeles. She settled in the community of Laguna Beach and soon took up painting in addition to her musical activities. She continued to compose, and worked as well as the director of music for Saint James Episcopal Church. She organized a string quartet which bore her own name, and in 1933 organized the Hollywood Woman's Symphony Orchestra, a group of fifty musicians. She also organized the Laguna Beach Little Symphony Orchestra, some of whose concerts she conducted, and chaired programming for the Society for the Advancement of American Music. [3]

Works

Risher had a long publishing association with the magazine The Etude , published by Theodore Presser; [1] her piano work Indian Lament received a prize offered by the Presser publishing house. [2] In total she composed some 350 pieces. Much of her output is chamber music, but she produced a number of larger-scale works as well, including a piano concerto. She also wrote a number of pedagogical works. [1] Four of Risher's pieces for piano trio - Andante Religioso, Berceuse, Mazurka, and From the West - were recorded by the Rawlins Piano Trio and released on Albany Records. [4] [5] A Mazurka Brilliante for violin and piano was recorded by Laura Kobayashi and Susan Keith Gray and released on Albany as well. [6] Additionally, a short work entitled Boblink was recorded by members of the New York Philharmonic under Henry Hadley as part of an educational series of records published by Ginn & Company. [7]

Risher died in California, although the location is uncertain; it has been given variously as La Crescenta [3] and Los Angeles. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Previn</span> German-American conductor, pianist, and composer (1929–2019)

André George Previn was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved success, and the latter two were part of his life until the end. In movies, he arranged and composed music. In jazz, he was a celebrated trio pianist, a piano-accompanist to singers of standards, and pianist-interpreter of songs from the "Great American Songbook". In classical music, he also performed as a pianist but gained television fame as a conductor, and during his last thirty years created his legacy as a composer of art music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Tower</span> American composer, concert pianist and conductor

Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florence Price</span> American composer (1887–1953)

Florence Beatrice Price was an American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death in 1953. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Price composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home.

Daniel Dorff is an American classical musician and classical composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leo Sowerby</span> American composer and church musician

Leo Salkeld Sowerby was an American composer and church musician. He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1946 and was often called the “Dean of American church music” in the early to mid 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Wakefield Cadman</span> American composer

Charles Wakefield Cadman was an American composer. For 40 years, he worked closely with Nelle Richmond Eberhart, who wrote most of the texts to his songs, including Four American Indian Songs. She also wrote the librettos for his five operas, two of which were based on Indian themes. He composed in a wide variety of genres.

William Wallace Gilchrist was an American composer and a major figure in nineteenth century music of Philadelphia. He founded the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia in 1874.

Harold Meltzer is an American composer. Harold is inspired by a wide variety of stimuli, from architectural spaces to postmodern fairy tales and messages inscribed in fortune cookies. In Fanfare Magazine, Robert Carl commented that he "seems to write pieces of scrupulous craft and exceptional freshness, which makes each seem like an important contribution." The first recording devoted to his music, released in 2010 by Naxos on its American Classics label, was named one of the CDs of the year in The New York Times and in Fanfare; new all-Meltzer recordings will issue from Open G Records (2017), Bridge Records (2018), and BMOP/Sound (2019). A Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 2009 for his sextet Brion, Meltzer has been awarded the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize;, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and both the Arts and Letters Award in Music and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tina Davidson is an American composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Kimball Hadley</span> American composer and conductor

Henry Kimball Hadley was an American composer and conductor.

Cheryl Frances-Hoad is a British composer.

Emma Lou Diemer is an American composer.

The Cassatt String Quartet was founded in 1985. Originally the first participants in Juilliard's Young Artists Quartet Program, the Quartet has gone on to win many teaching fellowships and awards and has toured internationally. Named after impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the quartet is based in New York City.

The Missouri Chamber Music Festival and Adult Chamber Music Intensive (ACMI) was founded in 2010. The goal of the MOCM Festival concerts is to present the fine art of small ensemble music to a wide audience through an accessible, community-based festival. The ACMI workshop is the educational portion of the festival, placing adult instrumentalists in chamber ensembles with Festival artists for coaching and performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stella Weiner Kriegshaber</span>

Stella Weiner Kriegshaber was a noted American pianist.

Laura Kobayashi is a violinist and teacher currently living in northern Virginia. She has performed in orchestras, chamber groups, and as a soloist.

Lansing McLoskey is an American composer of contemporary classical music. His Zealot Canticles: An Oratorio for Tolerance was a winner of the 61st Annual Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance by the ensemble The Crossing. McLoskey serves as a Professor of Music at the Frost School of Music in Miami, Florida. Among McLoskey's numerous commissions are those from Guerilla Opera, Copland House, The Fromm Foundation, The Barlow Endowment, N.E.A., The Crossing, ensemberlino vocale, New Spectrum Foundation, Ensemble Berlin PianoPercussion, Passepartout Duo, the Boston Choral Ensemble, and Kammerkoret NOVA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Rawlins</span> American composer and arranger

Steve Rawlins is an American musician, composer, arranger, musical director, and author. He has arranged music for a wide range of recording artists, including Smokey Robinson, Bette Midler, Chaka Khan, Anna Danes, and Lainie Kazan. He produced the single Angelito, recorded by Isela Sotelo on Motown Latino Records, which charted on Latin Billboard's Hot 100 in 1982.

Svea Goeta Nordblad Welander was a Swedish composer, organist, teacher, and violist, who was born in Linhamm, Malmo, to a family of nine children. In 1914, she began working as cinema pianist to save money for further education. She studied in Malmo and later in Copenhagen. Her teachers included John Heinze, Henrik Knudsen, Lars-Erik Larsson, and Sten Broman. She became a member of the Society of Swedish Composers.

Karen Michele Walwyn, born in New York, is an American concert pianist, classical music composer, and recording artist. She is an interpreter, advocate, and scholar of Florence B. Price and is noted as the first pianist to record the Florence Price Concerto in E minor for Piano along with a number of other premiere solo piano works of Price which drew many praises including a quote by James Harrington, October 25, 2022, from Fanfare Magazine, “her playing captures the essence of Price's inventive writing with personality, sensitivity and flair”. She currently is on faculty as Professor of Piano at the Berklee College of Music.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Anna Priscilla Risher - Pittsburgh Music History". mutualart.com. Retrieved Mar 16, 2020.
  2. 1 2 John Tasker Howard (1939). Our American Music: Three Hundred Years of it. Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
  3. 1 2 3 "Anna Priscilla Risher". parlorsongs.com. Retrieved Mar 16, 2020.
  4. "Albany Records: American Discoveries". www.albanyrecords.com. Retrieved Mar 16, 2020.
  5. "American Discoveries". Rawlins Piano Trio. Retrieved Mar 16, 2020.
  6. "Albany Records: Feminissimo!". www.albanyrecords.com. Retrieved Mar 16, 2020.
  7. James H. North (2008). Boston Symphony Orchestra: An Augmented Discography. Scarecrow Press. pp. 415–. ISBN   978-0-8108-6209-8.