In 1893, the Bohemian composer Antonin Dvořák visited America and forever changed the way American music was created, and at the same time helped break down racial and gender barriers in the arts. Dvořák is remembered today for his beautiful themes and as a master of late 19th-century “classical” music of Europe. However, he engaged in a profound dialogue with that popular musical traditions that would be the seeds of jazz, “America’s classical music.” The reverberations of that musical dialogue and its influence are still ringing around the world. Join Loren Schoenberg, Senior Scholar at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, as we discover how Johannes Brahms, Frederick Douglass’s nephew, and Duke Ellington, were wound up in the same web of influence that effects the music we hear today.
Presented in collaboration with Stanford Live.