Natalie Hinderas

Natalie Leota Henderson Hinderas Monagas (June 15, 1927 – July 22, 1987) was an American composer, professor and world-renowned pianist. She was born and grew up in Oberlin, Lorain County, Ohio, USA in a musical atmosphere; her father was a jazz musician and her mother was a pianist, composer, and teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Music. A child prodigy, she performed her first full length recital at the age of 8 and at 12 performed the Grieg Concerto with the Cleveland Women's Symphony. In 1946 became the youngest person to graduate from the Oberlin Conservatory’s Special Student’s School, and went on to New York to study at the Julliard School of Music with Olga Samaroff and later with Edward Steuermann where she completed her formal training at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music in 1953. In 1951 Hinderas made her New York debut at Town Hall and soon after signed a contract to perform regular radio recitals on the NBC television network. She was selected in 1960 by the U.S. State Department to tour Poland, Yugoslavia, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines as an American specialist and the following year was invited by the American Society for African Culture to appear at the opening of the Cultural Center in Lagos, Nigeria. During her career she was invited to perform with virtually every major symphony orchestra in the United States and was a recipient of the John Hay Whitney, Julius Rosenwald and Martha Baird Rockefeller scholarships and fellowships. She made several recordings, including a record of piano music by black American composers. She made her Cleveland Orchestra debut in 1973, playing the Schumann piano concerto under Louis Lane's baton. She was professor of music at Temple University and served on panels of the National Endowment for the Arts. She received the honorary Doctor of Music degree from Swarthmore College and was elected a trustee of Oberlin College in 1973. A pioneer in the performance of music by black composers, Hinderas discovered significant music by black artists while researching lesser-known composers. She performed music by George Walker, Nathaniel Dett, William Grant Still, and Stephen Chamber at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and in recitals across the United States. She toured colleges in the 1960s and 1970s, presenting performances and lectures on the black musical heritage of the United States and the influence of Black American music on classical music forms. The San Francisco Chronicle called her “One of the great pianists of our era.” Of her playing of Ginastera’s difficult Piano Concerto No.1, the music critic for The Saturday Review observed, “It beamed a bright light on the score’s magnetism and poetry… The bravos that followed were honestly earned by the richly gifted performer…” She died of cancer at her home in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania at the age of 60.