Z 0831.001 Still (William Grant) Papers

William Grant Still was born May 11, 1895, in Woodville, Mississippi. When he was twenty, he went to Memphis to work with W. C. Handy, the great blues composer. It was a fateful move because it introduced the young musician to black music and through him it brought the rich expression of American blacks into the concert halls and opera houses of the country. In 1933 his Afro-American Symphony was the first major composition by a black to be played in an American concert hall. It is now standard repertory with leading orchestras throughout the country. In 1940 the year before he began work on A Bayou Legend, his opera Troubled Island was produced by New York City Center Opera. Because his librettist left for Europe before the music was completed, Still asked his wife, writer Verna Arvey, to make final changes in the opera's book and was so pleased with the results he asked her to write an original libretto for him. She did and it was called A Bayou Legend. The opera was presented in Jackson as a world premier performance sponsored by OperaSouth. Until the founding of OperaSouth, there was little opportunity in Mississippi for blacks to sing opera. The backing of three Jackson-area black educational institutions, Jackson State University, Tougaloo College and Utica College, has made a musical theater workable. This addition to the Still papers contains a program and a copy of the composition of A Bayou Legend, 1974.