Helen Walker-Hill

Helen Walker-Hill (née Siemens; May 26, 1936 – August 8, 2013) was a Canadian pianist and musicologist who specialised in the music of black women composers.

Walker-Hill was married to the composer George Walker from 1960 to 1975, with the marriage producing two sons, the violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and the playwright Ian Walker.^[1][2][3]

Biography[]

Helen Walker-Hill was born on May 26, 1936, in Winnipeg, Canada. She held a BA from the University of Toledo (1957), was a Fulbright fellow at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris in France where she studied with Nadia Boulanger (1958), an MA in musicology from Smith College (1965) and a DMA in piano performance from the University of Colorado in Boulder (1981).^{[citation needed]} From 1983 to 1990 she was assistant professor adjunct at the piano faculty, University of Colorado in Boulder.^[4] From 1993 to 1998 she was visiting assistant professor at the University of Wyoming. She also taught at Muhlenberg College.^[5]

From 1987 onwards, proceeding from a desire to use music of black women composers in her piano performance and teachings, Walker-Hill dedicated herself to uncovering the material, utilising secondary sources and numerous archives, conducting interviews with composers, and engaging in voluminous correspondence with individuals and institutions. Her resulting lecture, "Rediscovering Heritage: The Music of Black Women Composers" was widely published and featured on National Public Radio.

Between 1996 and 1997 Walker-Hill was a Rockefeller resident fellow in the humanities at the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College. In the years following she donated the bulk of her collection of research materials and scores to the CBMR Library and Archives as the Helen Walker-Hill Collection.^[6] In 2005 the CBMR received a $94,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to compile a detailed finding aid to her collection as part of a project to inventory the papers of three major women scholars: Eileen Southern, Dena J. Epstein, and Helen Walker-Hill.

In 2006 Walker-Hill consulted with the CBMR on the production of a concert of piano, vocal, and chamber works from her collection.

Works[]

Books[]

• Piano Music by Black Women Composers: A Catalog of Solo and Ensemble Works: Greenwood Press, 1992 (ISBN 9780313064722)
• Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music 1983-1990, with Montague Ring: Hildegard Publishing Co., 1992
• Music by Black Women Composers: A Biography of Available Scores; CBMR Monographs, 1995 (ISBN 9780929911045)
• From Spirituals to Symphonies: African-American Women Composers and Their Music: Greenwood Press, 2002 (ISBN 9780313281419)^[5][7]

Recordings[]

• Kaleidoscope: Music by African-American Women with Gregory Walker (Leonarda LE 339, 1995)

References[]

External links[]

• "Rediscovering Heritage: The Music of Black Women Composers"
• "Guide to the Helen Walker-Hill Collection" University of Colorado, Boulder