Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price played her first piano recital at the age of four. Her first composition was published when she was eleven. After graduation from high school, she enrolled at the New England Conservatory, where her teachers included Frederick Converse and George Chadwick. After graduation she taught music in Little Rock and Atlanta, then moved to Chicago in 1927. There she studied at the American Conservatory of Music, the University of Chicago and Chicago Musical College. 

Price composed more than 300 works including symphonies, concertos, organ works, art songs, chamber works, and arrangements of spirituals. She was the first black female composer to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra when Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played the world premiere of her Symphony No. 1 in E minor in 1933.

Price wrote two compositions for string quartet around 1950, though some of the material may date from as early as 1927. Negro Folksongs in Counterpoint consisted of three settings, “Calvary,” “Shortnin’ Bread,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” She later added two more, “My Darling Clementine,” and “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” and changed the title to the present Five Folksongs in Counterpoint.

~ Program notes by Charley Samson, copyright 2023