Professor of Music Michael Cooper published the first edition of Margaret Bonds’ “The Night Shall Be Filled with Music,” for soprano solo and mixed chorus, with ClarNan Editions (Fayetteville, AR). Written for use in a 1965 festival titled “Songs of Freedom” that was organized by Rabbi Abraham J. Klausner, who is noted for his role in helping Holocaust survivors in Dachau and elsewhere to recover their faith and reconnect with loved ones after World War II, the composition uses the last five stanzas of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Day Is Done” (1844). It begins by urging sad and weary souls to turn to the words of “some humbler poet” rather than “the grand old masters and bards” and teaches that when we lend our own voices, however sad and weary, to the poet’s rhyme, “the night shall be filled with music” – a perfect message for a festival devoted to “present[ing] the trials, hopes and aspirations of those who have too long borne the yoke of oppression, made heavier by the silence of so many of us,” and for Margaret Bonds’ own life’s work of using her art to celebrate the dignity and inherent humanity of the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden. “The Night Shall Be Filled with Music” was published on the 54th anniversary of Margaret Bonds’ transition.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper and Part-time Instructor of Music Christopher Washington traveled to North Carolina for the world premiere of Margaret Bonds’ musical Bitter Laurel (1968-1969). Working with the surviving libretti, lead sheets, and other musical scores, Cooper and Washington created a fully performable version of the two-hour work, which was left complete, but not concluded, at Bonds’ sudden death in 1972. There is poetry to this premiere having happened at Queens University. Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907) was an African American who eventually became an activist on behalf of formerly enslaved people and the best friend and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, First Lady of the United States. Keckley rose to that station from enslavement by the Burwell family, whose name was proudly emblazoned on the main administration building of Queens University until 2020. The University, which has since removed the Burwell name from its properties due to the family’s cruelty in enslaving Keckley and others, decided to honor Keckley using Bonds’ music, as a means of doing a belated right where so much wrong was done before. The musical was a great success, with an instant standing ovation at the end of Act II: mission accomplished.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published Florence Price: Three Cotton Dances with Hildegard Publishing Company (Worcester, MA). The volume’s premise is a puzzle of sorts pertaining to Price’s life and work: though born and raised in Little Rock, AR, in the western end of the cotton-rich Arkansas Delta, she joined the Great Migration and moved from the agrarian south for good in 1928. Even though she flourished in her adopted home city of Chicago in the remaining 25 years of her life, she never stopped writing about the south, especially its lands and climes as these pertained to African American life. The three works presented here offer a cross-section of her musical reflections on cotton country that spans some 15 years and displays the richness and variety of her musical engagements with it.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper’s work in exposing Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s lamentable forgery of a composition by Florence Price in their 2026 new year’s concert has been featured in articles published by The Guardian and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Tom Service’s article in The Guardian is available for free here, and Peter Dobrin’s paywall-protected piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer is available here. Those interested in seeing what it’s all about can read Cooper’s three blog posts that have been cited. The first of these, from February 1, is available here, with follow-up posts on March 15 available here and March 21 available here.

Professor of Music Michael Cooper published a de facto diptych of beauty and power from the pen of Margaret Bonds: a setting of the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” arranged for four-part mixed choir and piano, and another setting of that same spiritual, titled simply “Walk with Me,” scored for solo voice, solo cello, and piano. Both scores are published by Hildegard Publishing Company. The first work was written for seventh- and eighth grade voices and reflects Bonds’ interest in providing high-quality music for young musicians (none of that trashy John Williams stuff, or the sappy Disney fare!). The second was arranged from the “Lament” of Bonds’ series of musical snapshots of key moments in the freedom struggle – a movement that, according to Bonds’ written explanation, depicted the responses of the African American community and the world after the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Montgomery, AL on September 15, 1963. The arrangement published here was composed for performance at the first anniversary of that tragedy – a musical commemoration of the event, and a way of inscribing the names of victims, Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11), into public memory by means of music, the language that, for Bonds, said more than mere words ever could.