Helen Hagan, Pianist and Composer, Gives Recital in Elizabeth City March 10, 1922

Helen Hagan Gives Recital Here To-Night. . . Just a Colored Woman, But She Took $2,000 Prize in Graduating at Yale

Helen Hagan, a colored woman of international fame as a pianist, will give a recital at the State Normal School at Elizabeth City to-night. She brings finer press notices perhaps than any other artist of her class ever brought to Elizabeth City. The New York Tribune calls her “a thorough musician in the highest sense.”

In 1921 Miss Hagan received the degree of Bachelor of Music from the Yale University School of Music, winning at the same time the Samuel Simon Sanford Foreign Fellowship of $2,000. This prize was won thru keen competition by composing and publicly performing her own concert for piano and orchestra.

She immediately went to Paris where her studies in piano and composition were continued and a diploma awarded her at the Scola Cantorum under Mlle. Blanche Selva, the prominent French Pianist, and Vincent d’Indy, the eminent French composer.

Front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, March 10, 1922. For more information on Helen Hagan, https://youtu.be/EtXnYOJgFdc Blog post on Hagan: http://wp.me/p6na5R-js.