Past Exhibitions
The Glory of the Day: LeXander Bryant Meets Florence B. Price
February 9–March 8, 2024
The Glory of the Day charts the encounters between the music of 20th-century American composer Florence B. Price (1888–1953) and Nashville-based photographer LeXander Bryant (b. 1989). Bryant’s photographs, the product of these encounters, speak to the ephemeral nature of live performance, the communion between artists across time, location, and medium, and the ever-evolving nature of the archive.
Florence B. Price, a groundbreaking figure in classical music and the first African-American woman to have a composition performed by a major American symphony orchestra, has recently emerged as a subject of long-overdue attention in performance and scholarship. To honor her legacy, Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music hosted Florence Price: A Celebration, a music festival featuring ensembles ranging from wind quintet to full orchestra in venues throughout Nashville. Each performance offered a distinct perspective on Price’s career as a composer, pianist, and educator while convening a unique community audience in every space.
The Curb Center commissioned LeXander Bryant to photograph these performances, not only to document but to engage artistically with performers, communities, and the archive of Florence Price’s music. In Bryant’s practice—from his evocative portraits of Nashville residents to videography documenting local community engagement projects and wheatpaste mural installations throughout the city—the notion of community is a unifying thread. His ability to capture the beauty and vibrancy of communities that have been overlooked uniquely suits Blair’s intent to honor the legacy of a composer who collapsed barriers of race and gender in classical music, as well as the scholars, musicians, and audiences who have found community through the study and performance of her work.
The exhibition title references James Weldon Johnson’s poem, “The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face,” for which Price composed an accompanying score. Bryant’s photographs capture the glory of encounters sparked by Price’s music—between the artists who performed it, and the contemporary audiences who reveled in it. Just as the performances allowed for renewed engagement with Price’s music, Bryant’s photographs, which will be housed in the Blair Music Library, will allow artists, students, and scholars of the future to witness the glory of Price’s legacy again and again.