In this Sonatas & Soundscapes interview that aired Tuesday, January 27, host Bradley Fuller chats with Lee Pringle, Founder and Artistic Director of the Colour of Music Festival. Pringle shares about the performers and the repertoire they're bringing to Charleston and North Charleston venues this February.
TRANSCRIPT:
FULLER: Lee, so wonderful to have you again!
PRINGLE: Thank you, Bradley, and it's wonderful to be back in the historic ETV Radio Studios.
FULLER: Another Colour of Music Festival is upon us, starting the 2026 season off in the city where it all began: Charleston. And for those, whether in Charleston or other parts of the state, who may not be familiar, what is Colour of Music all about?
PRINGLE: The Colour of Music is a festival that features performers from the African diaspora—musicians of African ancestry who get conservatory training but rarely get an opportunity to be in a setting that many of them get advanced degrees, doctorates in musical arts for. But they don’t have that opportunity to do those ensembles.
So, we bring together musicians in a setting that is vocal, piano recitals, many chamber ensembles from duos up to octets, and full chamber orchestra and symphonic orchestras, ranging from the smaller iterations up to the larger orchestrations.
FULLER: And some of that variety is on display in this upcoming series of performances in early February in Charleston. I understand there are some returning performers here. I see some familiar names on the program.
PRINGLE: Yes, German-born violinist—one of our lead violinists—Anyango Yarbo-Davenport, as well as Romuald Grimbert-Barré, who's from Paris, and we have some folks this year coming from Germany. We have someone coming from another region of France who splits her time between Paris and the US, and many performers who are from the West Coast, California, New York. So we've got an array. San Francisco.
Wonderful artists, people who really make up my—what I call the “marquee” chamber ensembles. As you know, chamber of music is a very unique art form and it requires just that, I call it maturity in playing that really enhances the experience for the patron.
FULLER: It’s the music of friends—
PRINGLE: It is.
FULLER: —and so it does take some true collaboration and friendship. People who know how to dance together, so to speak.
PRINGLE. Congeal. Yes, exactly. Waltz together.
FULLER: And there are also some new names, I see.
PRINGLE: Yes, we have DeAndre Simmons from San Diego. He's a bass, a wonderful bass. We’re looking forward to him performing Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach. He's going to do that with a string ensemble and, of course, at the wonderful Murray Center which is home of Spoleto Festival USA on George Street (for those who know the Charleston area).
And we also have a Jasmine Ogiste who is a pianist based in New York. She’s Manhattan School of Music and Julliard-trained, and we're excited about her coming for the first time. So we're excited about all those additions this year.
And we’ll be at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center at the end of February on Saturday, February 28th. And we’re excited about giving the PAC a wonderful, wonderful introduction of the high classics. It's known for the traveling shows and the North Charleston Pops has a wonderful season, but the city of North Charleston wants to bring classical music in a different iteration and we're excited to be partnering with them.
FULLER: All right, so a lot of the festival is February 4th through 7th, but on the final day of Black History Month you'll be in North Charleston.
PRINGLE: Yes, North Charleston has a 24th to 28th iteration of some performances that we’ll do there and we're excited about that.
FULLER: There’s a great variety of works here. You are the Artistic Director—the Founder, yes—but also the Artistic Director. And I'm curious if you could provide a little peek behind the scenes? When you're planning this—and I know it's a lot of work, a lot of planning. You were talking just now about some of the—I don't want to say drudgery you had to go through but—
PRINGLE: The administration part of that.
FULLER: —the less-appealing part, say, than listening to the Mendelssohn Octet (one of the works featured). So, when you’re planning a season, though, or a festival, are you thinking about which performers you can have come and then you say “What music would you like to bring?” Are you thinking repertoire first? Is it a combination? What's kind of a simplified process for you?
PRINGLE: You’re thinking budget first. [laughs] I want to make sure that the payroll works.
FULLER: Keeping it real. Keeping it real.
PRINGLE: I would say that, for me, curating a program—let me just say I do have an artistic committee who works very closely with me—I frame where I want the festival to go, what kind of ebb and flow I want it to be. And because I want to make sure that Black composers have a seat at the table, obviously I'm monitoring what's our ratio of that.
But I’m not mandating for artists to do a percentage of Black composers, because I do want them to perform music that they really want to do that's a part of the Western European canon.
But, you know, it's really budget first and having somewhat of a thematic run. Our American Revolution will be celebrated—or commemorated, rather—on July 4th, and as a result of that, we're doing some things that we haven't done: some Chevalier quartets. We're doing two pieces of his that will spotlight Romuald Grimbert-Barré, who is from Paris and who was born in Guadeloupe where Chevalier was born.
FULLER: For listeners who don't know, when we're talking about Chevalier, this is Joseph Bologne—
PRINGE: Joseph Bologne, yes.
FULLER:—Chevalier de Saint-Georges. And he was a man very active when, well, not just the American Revolution, but the French Revolution was going on.
PRINGLE: Yeah, the French Revolution and, you know, gave Marie Antoinette lessons on the harpsichord and was appointed to the Paris Opera as Music Director, but that got foiled.
So, to answer your question further, there is a combination of things, but most importantly, making sure that the finances work and ensuring that the musicians have a fulfilling experience of playing music that not only challenges them, but music that they want to play with artisans of this stature that don't get to get together.
And so that's the wonderful thing when I see that they have three rehearsals before a performance, and the level and what they deliver is just—it blows your mind.
But, you know, these folks have studied all of their lives. They've been doing it since they were in the youth orchestra and on up to their doctorates and master’s in performance.
FULLER: And there are some of these nods to tradition and very conventional ensembles, of course—string quartets—these ensembles that have been featured in the festival before. This year, there's also the addition of a new kind of chamber ensemble, at least for Colour of Music.
PRINGLE: Yes, we've done wind ensembles before. It was mainly doing doubles: flute or oboe concertos. In this case, we're doing wind quintets. And we have several iterations of that that I'm excited about. And, you know, we're digging from Mozart to Valerie Coleman who, you know, we were talking about her [Red Clay and] Mississippi Delta that is one of the compositions.
But I wanted to make sure the winds get a little bit more prominence. And this year, we have Eddie Sanders III, who is a retired Air Force officer bassoon player who will be leading some of those ensembles. But we've mixed it up where we've added strings, we've added piano—so for those of you who love wind ensembles, you're going to be in for a treat, because both Thursday and Friday's performance will be featuring the wind ensembles.
FULLER: It is great to see that variety of pieces and performers and all just coming together to make the whole. Some of the magic of chamber music, as we were speaking of, but then also some of these larger ensembles as well.
PRINGLE: Yeah. And as I mentioned, when we were green-room talking, you know, the City of Charleston has been known for the classical arts for many, many, many decades. In fact, I often note that our symphony—the Charleston Symphony—is one of the oldest, I think the oldest professional arts organization in South Carolina. But we also have Spoleto Festival USA, which brings a variety of many different art forms, from fully staged operas to big symphonic works and chamber series.
The North Charleston City is where—I say it's the “cultural hub”—where you have the Coliseum and you have the Performing Arts Center. So, I want to give a shoutout to Mayor Reggie Burgess for being a visionary and wanting to make sure that the city of North Charleston is not only known for pops and traveling touring shows, but also known for the high classics.
And we're excited to be bringing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto there on February 28th at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center. Romuald Grimbert-Barré will be the soloist there.
And we're going to debut a piece in Charleston called A Requiem for Rice: Unburied, Unmourned, and Unmarked. It chronicles the many lives that were lost during the Middle Passage during the Atlantic slave trade. The libretto is by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edda Fields Black who's a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. But she conceived this idea that we debut this piece in Pittsburgh in 2018. It's a John Christopher Wineglass composition and is extremely moving.
And we're just looking forward to bringing the entire community to this crossroads of the cultural arts in North Charleston. And we're excited that the city of Charleston continues to embrace us and allows us to have all these wonderful settings and wonderful chamber-like salons. So that's the beauty of the Lowcountry—we have these variations, and the Colour of Music Festival is excited to be a part of that.
FULLER: Lee, it sounds like you're really honoring your traditions and keeping this commitment to excellence but also looking forward to the future and following through with these visions for new ways of doing things, new venues, new kinds of performers. So, all best to you and everyone involved with Colour of Music for this 2026 season!
PRINGLE: Thank you, Bradley.
More information about the Colour of Music Festival can be found on its website: https://www.colourofmusic.org/home
Colour of Music is a financial supporter of South Carolina Public Radio.
