Jeneba Kanneh-Mason presents a five-track EP traces the evolution of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words” tradition across generations, musical styles, and genres. Continuing Kanneh-Mason’s passion for championing Black women composers, the acclaimed young pianist follows one of Felix Mendelssohn’s Op. 62 Lieder ohne Worte with two of Florence Price’s Songs Without Words and Margaret Bonds’s “The Bells,” the second movement from her Spiritual Suite for Piano. The EP concludes with the aria “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix (Softly awakes my heart)” from Camille Saint-Saëns’s opera Samson and Delilah. Nina Simone famously performed her own arrangement of the aria as a solo piano piece during her 1963 debut solo concert at Carnegie Hall, enriching the piece with embellishments and improvisatory flourishes. Jeneba honors this seminal artist with a transcription of that live performance.

Songs Without Words
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