The year 2009 was a good one for violinist Melissa White. It was the year that many scores by American composer Florence Price were discovered, and the year that Ms White played at the White House – for President Obama. Melissa comes to Cape Town to perform the Second Violin Concerto by Florence Price in the first concert of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s Summer Symphonies at the City Hall season on 29 August 2024, says PETA STEWART:
Melissa White has waited 12 years to come back to Cape Town (and a lifetime to perform with the CPO), for it was in 2012, when her Harlem Quartet, of which she was a founding member in 2006, performed with young musicians from Hout Bay in an open-air concert at the V&A Waterfront. “The wait has made this trip so much sweeter,” she says.
Melissa is a young woman who knows her own mind. She was just four when she saw an episode of Sesame Street with Itzhak Perlman and she asked her parents for a violin. “It took two years of nagging but when I was six I got one. My mother tells me that after three lessons my teacher said I had a natural aptitude for the instrument, which made my father laugh because all I did, in his eyes, was squeak. When I was 15 I transferred from public school to Interlochen Arts Academy for my final two years of high school and that is when I knew that I wanted music to be my future.
“The prize money from every competition I won from the age of nine or 10 went into paying for my violin studies as well as the cost of my instruments. I guess over time I managed to squeak less and less and then my first full-size violin was a 15 000 dollar instrument – a huge investment for my parents and me at the time – so I’d say that is when things really got real. As such, my dad was particularly happy when I was accepted to attend the Curtis Institute of Music because that guaranteed a full-ride scholarship for my undergrad studies and in his eyes my violin was finally paying itself back! It was a really big deal to get accepted to The Curtis Institute and I was very honoured.”
(Melissa went on to an M.Mus at the New England Conservatory.)
As an alumna, The Curtis Institute of Music can be proud of Melissa. With the Harlem Quartet, former quartet-in-residence at the Royal College of Music in London, she won a Grammy Award this past February and she has won several other prizes as well.
Florence Price – bang for your buck!
Melissa is very happy to be performing the Florence Price Concerto here.
“I performed her 1st Violin Concerto in 2020 and in 2022 the second for the first time. This will be my fourth time performing the 2nd Concerto and I am very happy to perform her work because I genuinely enjoy playing Florence Price’s music. Although it is short it gives so much bang for your buck. It’s in one movement, with several different themes and musical ideas. She has a wonderful way of using melodies. It’s like hearing blues with classical music inside! It may look like a simple melody but the story is between the notes – the history, the pain and the hard journey as she, a black woman, battled to get her works performed. That’s the real beauty.”
Melissa is also looking forward to working with Rossen Milanov, with whom she just days ago performed Bruch’s 1st Violin Concerto in New York.
“Rossen, who I know from my days at Curtis when he was with the Philadelphia Orchestra, is a wonderful artist with whom to work. He just lets me focus on my music.”
A teacher at the University of Buffalo and NYU, her aim is to inspire young musicians, particularly those of colour, to see what can be achieved. She says that when she was young there were no role models (“I was the only brown violinist whom I saw in classical music”) but that learning something new all the time is what kept her going and she tries to introduce new generations to music. Her generosity extends to Cape Town, and she has offered to present a master class for young violinists of the Cape Town Philharmonic Youth Orchestra.
Enchanting audiences
Melissa comes to Cape Town after a festival in the American Berlin (Maryland) and a week with her family in Michigan, flies back to Atlanta for her godson’s christening, takes up her teaching duties, then flies off to London where she is a member of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at London’s Wigmore Hall.
Teaching aside, the rest of her year is almost equally divided between chamber music and solo appearances in recital and with orchestras that range from the Philadelphia Orchestra to the Czech Philharmonic. She has even performed on film scores and played with pop artists like Alicia Keys and Bruno Mars.
Not for nothing has she been said to enchant audiences on her c1780 Ferdinando Gagliano violin, currently on loan from Strumenti.
What: Melissa White with the CPO | CPO Spring Symphonies season opening concert
Where and when: 29 August 2024
Tickets: Tickets for the concert from Artscape Dial-A-Seat 021 421 7695 where subscriptions are also available for all five in the season; or at Webtickets
Info: The concert will be preceded by a talk by Albert Combrink and Rossen Milanov at 6.45pm
WS
