Coloring Book of Black Composers
Illustrated by Sho-mei Pelletier

The first of its kind, this book honors 40 remarkable international Black classical composers from the 1700s to the present day. Each vivid illustration is accompanied by a biography that puts his or her life and music into historical perspective. Produced by the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.

Black composers have created masterful classical music for centuries, yet they are underrepresented in concert programming and in classical music education, silencing a rich vein of works from global consciousness. As young musicians seldom have the opportunity to study and perform classical music by Black composers, aspiring Black music students struggle to participate in an art form in which they do not appear to belong, perpetuating a lack of diversity on stage and among audiences.

With that in mind, over the last 15 years, Pine and her RBP Foundation have collected more than 900 works by 350+ Black composers from the 18th-21st centuries, representing Africa, North and South America, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, and Oceania.

The Music by Black Composers project was conceived by the award-winning, Billboard chart-topping violinist, Rachel Barton Pine (www.rachelbartonpine.com), who performs with the world’s leading orchestras and has recorded 37 acclaimed albums. She became the first living composer to be published as part of Carl Fischer’s “Masters Collection” series with the release of The Rachel Barton Pine Collection. Her performances are heard on NPR and stations around the globe, and she has appeared on The Today Show, A Prairie Home Companion, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, and PBS NewsHour, as well as features in newspapers around the world. In addition to the MBC project, her RBP Foundation assists young artists through its Instrument Loan Program, Grants for Education and Career, and Global HeartStrings, which supports musicians in developing countries.