Dr Samantha Ege to join University of Southampton Department of Music as Anniversary Fellow
The Department of Music, part of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton, is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Samantha Ege, one of the UK’s leading young scholar-musicians, to an Anniversary Fellowship for three years from 1 October 2022.
Dr Ege, a musicologist and concert pianist, is a globally recognized expert on the music of the African-American pianist-composer Florence Price (1887-1953). The Fellowship will enable Dr Ege to continue her ground-breaking research, including high-profile performances, placing Southampton at the heart of exciting new developments in scholarship on historical Black women in the United States and rewriting narratives of classical music and its audiences.
Southampton’s Anniversary Fellowship scheme offers an exciting opportunity for exceptional early-career researchers to be part of the University’s ambitious plans and to advance their research careers. The Fellowships, which are extremely competitive, provide the development and support that enables early career researchers to consolidate their presence as leaders in their field. Following a successful review at end of their third year, Fellows will transition to a permanent academic post at Southampton.
“We are absolutely delighted to welcome Samantha to our community of performers, composers and researchers, and look forward to sharing her exciting journey of exploration into the mostly untold story of how Black female music intellectuals such as Florence Price shaped music and society in the twentieth-century United States,” says Professor Thomas Irvine, Head of Music at Southampton. “Samantha’s appointment adds an exciting new dimension to our department, building on a long tradition of research on women in music exemplified by Professors Jeanice Brooks and Laurie Stras,” he continues. “She will inspire students at all levels here in Southampton and a broad public in our area and around the world.”
Dr Ege was the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, from 2020 to 2022. She holds a PhD in Musicology from the University of York and a BA with honours in Music from the University of Bristol. As a concert pianist, Dr Ege made her Barbican debut in 2021 with a "vivid, revelatory recital" (iNews). In her London debut at the 2021 London Festival of American Music she gave the world premiere of Florence Price's complete Fantasie Nègre.
She released her debut album (Four Women: Music for solo piano by Price, Kaprálová, Bilsland & Bonds) in 2018 with Wave Theory Record and her critically acclaimed second album in March 2021: Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price with Lorelt (Lontano Records Ltd.). Her third album (also with Lorelt, out now) is Black Renaissance Woman: Piano Music by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Nora Holt, Betty Jackson King & Helen Hagan.
“It is an honour to be recognised in this way by Southampton's Anniversary Fellowship scheme,” says Dr Ege. “I will now be part of a Music department with a long standing tradition of multifaceted scholarship, highlighting women's unsung contributions, and transforming pedagogical and public-facing landscapes. This is a very exciting time.”