Margaret Bonds (1913 72) studied with Florence Price at high school (she also had tuition later from Roy Harris and Robert Starer at the Juilliard School, among others, and in turn taught the late Ned Rorem). Like Price, Bonds was active as a pianist, composer and arranger; she gave the premiere of Price’s Negro Fantasy No 1 in 1930 and three years later was the first woman of colour to play as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The character of many of Bonds’s compositions was affected by her experiences of racial prejudice in the US. This is most obviously the case in her cantata Credo (1964 65, orchestrated around 1967 – the dating of many of her works is imprecise), setting the influential 1904 prose poem of that title by the sociologist, historian and civil rights activist WEB Du Bois (1868-1963). The simplicity of style and utterance of Bonds’s sectional treatment of the poem should not disguise the considerable skill of her setting. For 2020s audiences, though, Du Bois’s text may feel uncomfortable with its paeans to belief in ‘the Negro Race’ (section 2) and ‘Pride of Race’ (section 3), but these must be heard in its overall context and with an understanding of the time. In the mid-1960s, Du Bois’s message (which, by the way, is in no way supremacist) must have seemed especially relevant; it still is.

Simon Bore the Cross was composed at much the same time, to a text by Bonds’s longtime collaborator Langston Hughes (librettist of her best-known work, the 1954 Christmas cantata The Ballad of the Brown King – 12/19). The focus here is the role played in the Crucifixion story by Simon of Cyrene, particularly in sections 4 6. Musically, Simon is written in a more oratorical style, though with remarkable limpidity of scoring and texture. Indeed, there is a luminosity in the music throughout that is quite compelling. Simon is based thematically on the Spiritual ‘He never said a mumblin’ word’, set outright in the penultimate section.

There are a number of recent performances of both works available on YouTube but these from the excellent Dessoff Choirs and orchestra are by far the most accomplished, for which conductor Malcolm J Merriweather deserves much credit. His two soloists, Janinah Burnett and Dashon Burton, are the most secure and expressive to be heard. Avie’s sound is first-rate.