For several years, I’ve been researching Philippa Schuyler’s piano music, which is currently only available in handwritten manuscripts in the Schuyler Family Papers at the Schomburg Center in New York. I’m incredibly grateful to have been able to record Schuyler’s mature piano works in my albums Seven Pillars of Wisdom (2022) and Travelogue (2024), in no small part due to the generosity of individual donors, the SC Arts Commission, and Newberry College. To learn more about Schuyler’s music, you can read as you listen: Snapshots of Forgotten Adventures: Rediscovering the Piano Music of Philippa Schuyler.
Available worldwide on August 2, 2024, for what would have been Schuyler’s ninety-third birthday.
About the Album:
Pianist and composer Philippa Schuyler (1931-1967) was often called the most well-traveled young person of her day, eventually performing in nearly eighty countries around the world. Along the way, she took note of everything she experienced, resulting in both musical compositions and a career in freelance journalism. Travelogue: Philippa Schuyler’s Music for Piano traces Schuyler’s travels from her early folk music arrangements to her mature African and Arabic inspired compositions. The album includes world premiere recordings of Schuyler’s White Nile Suite, Carnival in Languedoc, African Rhapsody, Uganda Martyrs, and a recently rediscovered untitled piece that is likely her final work. Travelogue’s recording of White Nile Suite is currently a finalist for the 2025 Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for Performance of American Music.
This project is funded in part by the South Carolina Arts Commission which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts. This project is also funded in part by a generous award from the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund of The Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina. Newberry College also provided partial project funding.
Cover photo by Carl Van Vechten, provided by The Beinecke Library Yale University and used with the permission of ©Van Vechten Trust.
To request an copy for review: sarahmastersonpianist@gmail.com
Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the culmination of years of research reconstructing Philippa Schuyler’s largest piano work, not heard since her death in 1967. Composed by a mostly forgotten biracial American composer, this unique and exciting album-length piece combines Arabic and African influences to express the composer’s interpretation of T.E. Lawrence’s experiences in the Middle East in WWI. This landmark recording received Third Prize in the 2023 Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music (professional division).
Many thanks to Jaye Ingram for providing his services as recording engineer and to Shandon Presbyterian Church in Columbia, SC for allowing me to record on their beautiful Steinway piano.
Dr. Sarah Masterson, Pianist & Educator 