University of Arkansas to Host 2026 Florence Price International Piano Competition

The University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections Division will spotlight the archives of trailblazing composer Florence Price this Friday and Saturday during the 2026 Florence Price International Piano Competition, featuring a pop-up exhibit, a scholarly lecture, and sponsorship of the event’s $1,000 grand prize, news.uark.edu reported.

Exhibiting Original Manuscripts and Family Archives

Visitors heading to the Faulkner Performing Arts Center this weekend will find rare primary materials waiting for them. Special Collections is setting up a pop-up exhibit featuring original manuscripts of the exact music competitors will perform on stage. Joshua Youngblood, associate dean for Special Collections, noted that the university holds a vast institutional footprint for the composer.

We have six different archives that relate to Florence Price. We’re always collecting Price and we get to showcase her, Youngblood told KUAF.

The display extends beyond musical scores. Organizers plan to exhibit biographical materials, family photographs from Price’s upbringing in Little Rock, and pages from her personal diaries. Born in the Arkansas capital in 1887, Price showed prodigious talent early, composing her first piece at age 11 before earning degrees in organ performance and piano pedagogy.

Scholarly Insights into the Piano Sonata

The academic component of the weekend anchors itself in textual discovery. Michael Clark, a visiting scholar from Baylor University and competition juror, will deliver a lecture titled Deciphering Price’s Piano Sonata From Her Manuscripts at 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, in room 449 of Mullins Library. Original versions of the Piano Sonata from Special Collections will be on display during the talk.

The lecture addresses a decades-long evolution in how musicologists understand Price’s largest solo piano work. When musicologist Rae Linda Brown published the first edition of the sonata in 1997, she worked from a single available manuscript. Everything changed in 2009 when researchers recovered hundreds of documents from Price’s summer residence, uncovering a second, much earlier manuscript.

Clark’s lecture will break down the structural differences between the two versions and what those variations mean for contemporary performers interpreting the piece.

Grammy-Winning Leadership and International Finalists

The competition itself brings twelve finalists to Arkansas from the United States, India, China, and Thailand. Grammy Award-winning pianist Michelle Cann will chair the jury and kick off the weekend with an opening recital at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, at the Faulkner Performing Arts Center.

Cann earned recognition last year when she received the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, recorded alongside soprano Karen Slack. That album brought 19 previously unpublished songs to light. Cann also secured a 2023 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance for her recording of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with the New York Youth Symphony.

Florence Price at the piano — Photo: kuaf.com

Joining Cann on the adjudication panel are Clark and Jeongwon Hamm of the University of Oklahoma. Xiting Yang, founder and artistic director of the competition and teaching assistant professor in the Department of Music at the University of Arkansas, oversees the annual event.

Price broke major cultural barriers in 1933 when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her Symphony No. 1 in E minor, marking the first time a major American orchestra performed a composition by an African American woman. While she spent her working professional life in Chicago publishing and composing more than 300 works, her roots remain deeply tied to Arkansas.

Event Details and Access

The Florence Price International Piano Competition is open to the general public. Attendees can secure advance tickets through tickets.uark.edu, with events running through Saturday at the Faulkner Performing Arts Center and Mullins Library.