Lecture Recital: Florence Price: The Life and Music of a Trailblazing American
Dr. Clark, guest pianist from Baylor University, will tell Price's remarkable life story, from her roots in the Jim Crow South through her tenacious pursuit of a compositional career to her leading role in the Black Chicago Renaissance, sharing piano pieces she wrote at each stage. Highlighting Price’s mastery of multiple styles, the program will feature numerous short works, some published for the first time in 2025, and conclude with her monumental Piano Sonata in E Minor, a powerful fusion of African American vernacular styles and the Romantic tradition.
Admission is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed.
Michael Clark is a pianist, teacher, and scholar noted for his “natural, clear, and nuanced” performances (Piano Magazine). An advocate for the music of Florence Price, he has presented numerous lecture recitals on her piano music. His debut album, Waltzes and Character Pieces of Florence Price, released by Navona Records, featured seven world-premiere recordings and “embodied the musical and pianistic richness of Price’s music” (Sonograma Magazine). He edited Florence Price: Rediscovered Gems for Piano Solo, a collection of previously unpublished intermediate works released by Hal Leonard in January 2025.
Devoted to practical solutions in pedagogy, Clark researches traditions of piano fingering and is the founder of Piano Tricks, an online database of fingerings and redistributions for over 1000 passages from the piano repertoire. He has presented at the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, the Music Teachers National Association Conference, and MTNA’s Group Piano and Piano Pedagogy (GP3) Forum. His pedagogical writing has appeared in Piano Magazine and MTNA e-Journal, and he is a member of American Music Teacher’s Editorial Committee.
Clark currently serves as Assistant Professor of Piano and Director of Secondary Piano at Baylor University. He previously taught in collegiate, studio, and community outreach settings in the Houston area. Clark earned a DMA in Piano Performance with a Certificate in Teaching and Learning from Rice University, an M.M. in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Houston, and a B.M. in Piano Performance from Ithaca College. His primary teachers include Robert Roux, Nancy Weems, Jennifer Hayghe, and Melinda Smashey Jones. Clark studied pedagogy with Courtney Crappell and John Weems and has been a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music (NCTM) since 2017.