This interview was co-conducted by Nicholas Tran, Tanya Orlova, and Rachel Goodwin. The interview was edited for style and clarity. 

Nicholas Tran: Louise, we are so happy to be here with you today. There is much to say about your impact on the classical music community, especially the work you have gone through in order to preserve the scores of some fantastic, but lesser known African American composers. Can you speak on what brought you to start in the field of archiving these scores, specifically your work with Margaret Bonds’ music?

Louise Toppin: Initially I was collecting Margaret Bonds’ scores for no reason other than my fascination with them. The first 11 scores I acquired were gifted to me by Charlotte Holloman, who was friends with Margaret Bonds. That wasn’t even me finding anything, rather I was given them as a gift and was trying to figure out what to do with them, and find a way to share it with others.

Rachel Goodwin: I read your introduction to the Margaret Bonds’ collection. It’s so stunning, the kind of support between this group of Black artists, willing to do anything for each other. 

LT: Well, you know, the Black community also had to support each other. Throughout her career they had Jim Crow laws, Black people were fleeing from the South to Chicago and New York, there was redlining in terms of housing. They had to support each other - the Black community had to stay together. Concerts and artistic life was the one space that they knew they could comfortably exist in. I love the story of Florence Price’s community writing out the parts right as the symphony was about to be performed, because she didn’t have the parts. She wasn’t going to make it on time, and the musicians of the community who knew how to read music wrote out the parts. People just really supported each other, which was a beautiful thing, but it was also a survival thing. 

Margaret Bonds was also part of the musical community as a child. She grew up around musical excellence and music nights in Esthella Bonds’ house, during which Florence Price, Abby Mitchell and other talents were also present at times. This fosters the passion for singing and musical creation. Charlotte Holloman, while talking about how Margaret Bonds was her friend, once said “Yeah, we’d go visit Langston for dinner.” And I was like “What? You and Langston Hughes went to dinner?” And she said “Yeah, or we’d go visit Hall.” “You mean Hall Johnson’s house? Are you kidding me?” She looked surprised that I looked surprised. You’d go to dinner and have parties and Langston Hughes would read his poetry, and somebody would sing. Just think of what life would be like if our artists did that. There are definitely pockets - but what if we had that widespread? One time I was in Minnesota to do an opera and was invited to a house party there with such talents as Robert Honeysucker, Pam Dillard, and Ray Wayden, just singing in someone’s living room. It was so much fun.

NT: I think with the way Convergence Ensemble designed AVPS, we tried to emphasize that artists and musicians should all be talking to each other and collaborating with each other. Hearing the poetry and music be performed in that real-life collaborative environment is one of the key aspects of this program. 

LT: And there are many ways to integrate it. I saw an interesting piece featuring Terrence McKnight, which opens with showing modern-day responses in protest, followed by a Beethoven sonata played on the piano, and Terrence reading a Langston Hughes poem over it, similar to the old-time readings. This beautiful piece, “The Demonstration” is actually one of the units in our online courses this summer, “Black Art and Social Protest.”

NT: That’s wonderful. I was wondering how you got started with all of your scholarly work and your research? You’re a performer, and from my experience performers aren’t always as academically involved. 

LT: I also went to undergrad at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I did pre-med and music, so I’m coming from a very academic background. My father was a historian, so I learned the value of research as a child: he used to take me with him when he was supposed to babysit me. He had to go to the library to do his work, and I would help him look up dates and find the books. I really did fall in love with that. He wrote books on African American themes, and he had the first TV show in the country on African American history on PBS. My mother was an English professor. I did that and I did go to Peabody conservatory for two degrees. And then I came to the University of Michigan for my Doctorate. I took one course on African American music with the scholar Raylinda Brown, who turned out to be the Florence Price scholar. I went on to do my dissertation on African American music.  

Part of my recognizing Bonds was when I moved to DC after graduate school and I went to find a coach. I was recommended Charlotte Holloman, who was close friends with Margaret Bonds and she had these scores. She said “You’re a wonderful singer and have an interest in African American music. I have these scores that I can’t convince anybody to sing. Would you be interested in looking at them? They’re by my friend Margaret.” I didn’t know who “Margaret” was just by the first name. So I went to the basement, where she sent me, and I found these scores, and they were Margaret Bonds! And because of my work I recognized the handwriting and the scores. I’ve never heard these songs, I’ve never seen them referenced. Where is this coming from? She said “Margaret was a friend of mine and I sang them in Town Hall in 1951.” And the important thing is, we were talking 40 years later, and she couldn’t get anyone to sing these songs. My journeys came together because of daily circumstances, academic circumstances, and my genuine inquisitive nature and interest in the cultural context. 

NT: That’s incredible. I can’t imagine going into somebody else’s home and seeing a stack of scores in their basement. 

LT: I wasn’t prepared for that. I was there working on operatic scores, that’s the repertoire I worked on with her. 

After that happened, I started thinking about publishing, but I hadn’t committed yet. Soon after, I was invited with others to sing a concert of this newly found music by Florence Price, they found it in Chicago. So I’m having dinner with Raylinda Brown as she was invited to speak at that event, and we’re at Glendower Jones’ house, and I mention what I’m doing with the Bonds, and he goes down to the basement and comes up with a Margaret Bonds manuscript. I had never heard of this piece. He said he got it at a yard sale. This repertoire is out there, and people may not even realise they have a real Margaret Bonds score. 

NT: Did finding these scores and realizing a lot of people don’t even know this music is out there inspire you to create the database and George Shirley competition?

LT: Yes, after I saw my career teaching and lecturing the repertoire, I asked myself: “What can I do to help the next generation approach this repertoire?” Mr. Shirley happened to approach me and he wanted to found a competition, and we created the George Shirley competition - we focused on African American music, we monetized it, and gave students a reason and a space to learn it. The competition is ten years old, and we give $32,000 to students each year. When they come, they don’t just sing for fifteen minutes, they take classes with us, we create an environment for three days where you sing it, you hear it, and you also can learn about it. Our top prize for the pre-professionals division is $5,000. They can also win by category: Best Spiritual, Best Art Song, there are about fifteen of those. It’s a collection of people of all ethnicities, it’s for all students. 

But as I was working with the competition, I realized that they can’t find the music. That’s why I created the research tool and the database. We’re getting ready to launch part two of it, because we were approached by orchestras that wanted to do the same thing. We’re working with partners around the country to open that May 4th. 

Tanya Orlova: I saw that you’re hosting the competition online this year. How is that going right now?

LT: We’ve had a few bumps because of the digitization, but it’s going pretty well. Last year we cancelled it, because our application deadline was March 1st, and Universities shut down March 11th. I said, “There is no way we can pivot this quickly enough”. We still managed to do the composers' competition. But this year I said, “We can’t cancel this twice in a row.” We delayed our celebration for the ten-year anniversary, since this is technically our eleventh year. But we’re really trying to celebrate our progress and achievements this year - we first started with a $1000 and a high school competition, and now we are a four-tier competition with $32,000 in prize money. Part of our mission was getting people to come, as long as they chose the repertoire and it was fitting. Some students would come all four years of college and grad school. It became a family and community. This year, we’re probably going to show former master-classes. I don’t think we’re going to try live classes. It’s too hard to do all of that. We’ll do announcements of who made the semi finals and the finals, and who won the competition live. We have years of content people have never seen. 

TO: How would you say the competition impacts students? Do you have any personal stories?

LT: They write us back. The first Canadian winner was an African American man from University of Toronto, and he wrote back immediately, saying the competition gave him the validation he didn’t even realize he needed. He said that as a Black man, he’d never been in such a situation, he never had an opportunity to sing the narratives of Black composers. He said it changed his life and perception. I love seeing certain people’s titles from the competition in their bios. They know that they always have our support. 

NT: That is incredible. Is the George Shirley competition part of your work with Videmus?

LT: It is part of it. Videmus is the parent organization for me (we’re a 501c3), and we founded the George Shirley competition. At some point I will probably separate them even further. We were actually founded in Boston with Vivian Taylor. 

NT: This seems like a big part of your experience, but could you talk a little bit about how to build community? That is something that Convergence does, but even for myself, I’m a composer, but I’ve been really wanting to build community with immigrants and refugees, since my parents were refugees. 

LT: That’s a really interesting question. I think community starts with conversation. For example, I am starting a new venture and I went to someone I knew who does some funding of work in the voice area. When I presented it to her, she said it would revolutionize things. She proposed things that we could do, and some partners - and so I had a meeting earlier today with all of them. Part of what I’ve done from the very beginning, is always asking people in my community - “What would you think if I did a concert? What would you think if I started this initiative? Would there be support?”

Trying to work within an academic institution is sometimes a good place to start. Finding everybody who can be interested in this subject is one of the most important things. I think I am good at being a connector. I bring people together. I did two large scale conferences, the first one was celebrating 25 years of Videmus. I thought to myself - what subjects has Videmus covered in these years? I started there, with the legacy. They did two recordings of William Grant Still, so I contacted the opera department and they did an opera by William Grant Still in the fall. I contacted scholars and the family of the composer and saw if they wanted to speak at the conference. I built the conference around that. Using that same method, I did a conference with Margaret Bonds. The first conference was more of a conversation on what do people need in terms of African American scholarship. We introduced singers to each other, talked about Blackness and opera. Start with your connections, and look anywhere where you can find names, and reach out. Wherever I live, I try to find community. 

Even with the competition, Zingerman’s (the sponsor for the $1,000 prize) business started off as a restaurant, and grew into a community, and they have become a big company because of relationships and community. I try to build partnerships. Where it started with my money, it is not my money anymore. The sponsors get to meet the competitors, and they love it. They love that they are honoring George Shirley, and love that they are offering financial support to the students. 

RG: I think there is so much desire for those kinds of connections. And the people that you bring to these conferences, like a young scholar of Margaret Bonds, it could be changing their life. 

LT: And that is my point. We are connecting people - none of my conferences have been just the scholars at the top level. It’s always been scholars, performers at the top and medium levels, and students presenting papers, having a voice, or performing. At the last conference I did we did one part of an opera, because we wanted the students involved, and that session was packed, and the students got to spend time with the composer, who also happened to be the second African American student to get a degree in composition from Michigan. I brought him back to be an inspiration for another generation of Michigan students. That’s what I’m always trying to find. Part of leaving school is - who are the people you know in the field already? And I’m not the only one doing this, but I try to bring people to them, all the people they have master-classes with. But in terms of African American music in particular, I might be the only resource the voice students have right now. I teach a course in African American Art Song there, and my colleagues and I support them singing the repertoire, but my class is the only physical class in the school of music for voice. 

RG: So how do we make sure this happens more in conservatories and music schools?

LT: That’s a loaded question. I’ve been talking to a lot of colleges, universities, conservatories for the last year, multiple hours every week. One thing I tell students is - curriculum will change if you’re going to ask for it. It’s not going to change if I say “this is important, this needs to change.” As a faculty member, nobody has to listen to me. But if students come into the program's office, I know faculty will be responsive to it. 

One of the things we did were the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion credits. We figured out ways for the students to take several, and that supported the mission of University of North Carolina, and that also supported us saying “we think this is important.” So how do others get into it? It had to be students at UNC, and it had to be students at all the other Universities saying “it is not enough to only have the Western European education.” We have to think strategically about incorporating other perspectives in the curriculum. Students can start in their applied areas, talk to their professors. If they don’t listen, keep going up the chain until someone hears you. We don’t have to wait until Black History Month or Martin Luther King day to do a concert - nobody is going to stop students from doing that any time of the year. Faculty hosting concerts and bringing in guests also shows the administration that this is important to the faculty too. In terms of theory, composition, musicology I’ve been talking to faculty about using music samples by African American composers - they studied the same way, and they have examples for everything you may be studying. If you need to teach about Boulanger, pick African American composers who studied with Boulanger. Margaret Bonds also did go to study with her, but Boulanger just sent her home because she felt like Bonds had her technique already in place. She said, “I don’t need to change you. You need to go on.” 

NT: This is so important - adding different perspectives to our curriculum. This can only contribute to a comprehensive, all-around musical education. 

LT: Yes, and there are so many ways you can do this. If you want to teach a string quartet, you don’t have to just teach Mozart, you can teach Saint-George - or give a homework assignment with Saint-George, and teach Mozart. There are ways to do this, and it’s not even hard. One of my students said that a professor who was teaching Renaissance was asking about that, and I said “Let’s see what we can find.” And we found after some searching - Vincente Lusitano, a person from the 1600s. He was a Portugese composer and theorist - so not necessarily African American, but from the diaspora. He died after 1561. 

There are tons of notable musicians - the whole consideration with this work is, because these composers were running under the radar, very few people were researching them. But we can look in what has been left out of sight, and find that there are these wonderful composers and give them the same deep dive. Don’t get me wrong - I love that there are a million biographies of Mozart and Beethoven, it is important, and there’s always new scholarship. But someone can go deep down, and that will tell us a new story of our musical heritage. That is my answer - do concerts, conferences, African American material, but most importantly, if the students decide that it is important the University will respond. The students have more power even if they don’t realize it, because they are paying for the education. 

Nicholas Tran is a composer and Convergence Ensemble’s Administrative-Operations Manager and earned his Bachelor’s of Music in Composition at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Tanya Orlova, Marketing and Operations Volunteer for Convergence Ensemble, is a graduating student from Berklee in Music Management, originally from Russia, and their background as a non-binary student has been important in their involvement in social justice. Rachel Goodwin is a pianist and the Artistic Director and Founder of Convergence Ensemble. With nearly three decades of grassroots musical work in Dorchester, MA, she has helped design, implement, and perform in concerts hailed by the press for their “gutsy, risk-taking programming” (Patriot Ledger).