Composers
Barbara Geyen Sherrill
1932 -About
Barbara Sherrill (b. 1932) earned a bachelor of music degree in piano at the California Institute of the Arts, holds a teacher’s credential from the University of Southern California and a master’s degree form California and a master’s degree from California State University at Los Angeles, and has taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She conducted the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor concerts that introduced many new compositions of this English Black composer to Los Angeles audiences, and originated the Music in Black—The Classic Image! Radio broadcasts on KPFK. Sherrill organized the Heritage Singers to perform the music of African American composers. In 1995, the Progressive Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Yvette Devereaux, performed two excerpts from her Christmas Cantata at the Music Center. She is also a songwriter in the popular song genre, the director and organist at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, and the director of the Drama Guild at St. Paul’s
Related Information
A New Anthology of Art Songs by African American Composers, https://www.musicthatserves.com/bio
Works by Barbara Geyen Sherrill
Title | Collection | Voice Type | Range | Poet |
---|---|---|---|---|
Club Woman from The Moods of My People | Voice | A4 - G5 | Mary Carter Smith | |
Daedalus, Fly Away Home from The Moods of My People | Voice | B3 - G5 | Robert E. Hayden | |
Joseph's Aria | Three Songs on Poems of Langston Hughes | Baritone | Ab2 - Db4 | Biblical |
Mae's Rent Party from The Moods of My People | Voice | B3 - A5 | Ernest J. Wilson Jr. | |
My Beautiful Red Rose | Love Song Cycle | Voice | E4 - A5 | Barbara Sherrill |
My Love is Gone | Love Song Cycle | Voice | B3 - G5 | Barbara Sherrill |
My Only Love | Love Song Cycle | Voice | E4 - G#5 | Barbara Sherrill |