Join us for a one-day symposium event that celebrates the music of Undine Smith Moore and the choral tradition from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Widely considered the “Dean of Black Women Composers,” Undine Smith Moore was a Professor at Virginia State University, one of the first public HBCUs, where she taught piano and theory, composed choral music, and ran the Black research center. This event recognizes her contributions in a joint symposium and concert at UCLA in which choral singers from VSU will perform alongside members of UCLA’s singing ensembles.

The Virginia State University Concert Choir will be at UCLA for a weeklong residency that will involve interactive workshops focused on the concerted spiritual and gospel performance practice, rehearsals with the UCLA choral ensembles, and a concert in which three recently prepared manuscripts of Smith's choral works will be performed in an intercollegiate collaboration. The concert will be on Thursday March 13. Learn more about the concert. 

Alongside the concert, the Center for Music Humanities is hosting a symposium focused on the history of spirituals, the HBCU choral tradition, and issues of appropriation and ethics when approaching African American Music. Within the tradition of American choral music, the ensembles, composers, and performance practices from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) built a legacy of artistic achievement linked with activism. From the Fisk Jubilee Singers, whose singing challenged preconceived notions of black performers, to the HBCU campuses, where singing played a major organizing role for the civil rights movement, Black choral music drew on haunting legacies of slavery, Christianity, and activism in service of art that could change society.

This event celebrates the legacy of HBCU choral traditions by considering forms of knowledge held in oral histories, manuscripts, and performance practices.

The event was made possible through the Professor Ciro Zoppo Graduate Student Award in Music (UCLA), Chancellor Arts Initiative (UCLA), Center for Musical Humanities (UCLA), the Virginia State University Department of Music, the Virginia State University Concert Choir-Alumni Association, and the generous support of donors and sponsors to the Virginia State University Concert Choir Foundation.

This program is made possible by the Joyce S. and Robert U. Nelson Fund. Robert Uriel Nelson was a revered musicologist and music professor at UCLA, who, together with his wife, established a generous endowment for the university to make programs like this possible.