Concerts at YSM

In his 1912 report to the “President and Fellows of Yale University,” Dean Horatio Parker wrote that the School’s Samuel Simons Sanford Fellowship — given “to the most gifted performer who shall also have marked ability in original composition,” Parker explained — “was made this year for the first time to Helen Eugenia Hagan for a brilliant performance of an original concerto (first movement) for piano and orchestra. Ms. Hagan shows not only pianistic talent of rare promise but also clearly marked ability to conceive and execute musical ideas of much charm and no little originality.”

On Oct. 21, pianist and musicologist Dr. Samantha Ege will join Principal Conductor Peter Oundjian and the Yale Philharmonia for the world orchestral premiere of Helen Hagan’s Piano Concerto in C minor, featuring a new orchestration by composer and distinguished YSM alum Soomin Kim ’21MM ’22MMA. We spoke with Ege and Kim about Hagan, who, in 1912, became the first Black woman to graduate from the Yale School of Music, and about the Concerto in C minor.

The Yale School of Music’s incoming class was formally installed during an annual Convocation on September 8.