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Sunday July 6th 2008 |
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Sunday July 6th 2008 |
a non-profit education organization | |
September 26
From Anniston, Alabama at the age of thirteen ran away from home to enter Tuskegee Institute. Supporting himself by manual labor, he completed his education there in 1921. In 1931, he organized the School of Music at Tuskegee, and for twenty-five years conducted the one hundred voice "Tuskegee Choir." In 1932-33, this choir was a main attraction at the grand opening of the Radio City Music Hall in New York. Under the direction of Dr. Dawson, they performed for Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Dawson made guest appearances throughout the United States and abroad. He was a recognized authority on the religious folk music of the American Negro, and his choral and orchestral arrangements were extensively performed. He composed the "Negro Folk Symphony" which premiered in 1934 by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. In this work the composer used melodic and rhythmic language borrowed from Negro spirituals, along with original material in the same idiom. The symphony was imaginative, dramatic, and colorfully orchestrated. Dawson was a director and consultant to many festival groups. In 1956 Tuskegee Institute gave him the honorary degree of doctor of music, that same year he was sent by the U. S. State Department to conduct various choral groups in Spain. In 1952 Dawson visited seven countries in West Africa to study indigenous African music. He later revised the Negro Folk Symphony with a rhythmic foundation inspired by African influences. Dawson was guest conductor with the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (1966), the Wayne State University (Michigan) Glee Club (1970), and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (1975). He held degrees in theory and composition from Horner Institute of Fine Arts in Kansas City, MO, and the American Conservatory of Music. He holds honorary doctorates from Tuskegee Institute, Lincoln University and Ithaca College. He was named to the Alabama Arts Hall of Fame in 1975, and received the Alumni Merit Award from Tuskegee Institute in 1983. He died on May 4, 1990. Reference: Black lives essays in African American biography by James L Conyers Publisher: Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, ©1999. ISBN: 058527763X 0765603306
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The African American Registry®, The African American Registry® Copyright 2005, 2006
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