BBC Symphony Orchestra Total Immersion
George Walker
![Photo of George Walker looking at the camera](/sites/default/files/styles/hero_constrained_small/public/images/2022-03/01%20GEORGE%20T%20WALKER.jpg?h=ee0e7c61&itok=o3NsyC_O)
George Walker was a giant of American music. In a day of Total Immersion, the BBC Symphony Orchestra explores the enduring voice and turbulent times of a composer who wrote without compromise.
When George Walker died in 2018 at the age of 96, obituaries focussed on his achievement as the first African-American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize. But the full story is even more compelling. Walker was a modernist of formidable intellectual and imaginative power; a true American individualist, who followed no artistic agenda but his own – and in doing so, created music of urgent and uncompromising integrity. Today we meet his challenge head-on.
Produced by the BBC Symphony Orchestra
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Events
![Photo of George Walker looking at the camera](/sites/default/files/styles/event_listing_small/public/images/2022-03/05%20GEORGE%20T%20WALKER.jpg?h=e4d7c85a&itok=fHL3cLnS)
BBC SO Total Immersion: Discovering George Walker
Alpesh Chauhan conducts four of George Walker’s most potent orchestral works: the climax of a day of Total Immersion in the imagination of this Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.
![Photo of George Walker playing the piano](/sites/default/files/styles/event_listing_small/public/images/2022-10/George%20Walker%20Guildhall.jpg?h=2ca43eb9&itok=-bEhfd1X)
BBC SO Total Immersion: The World in a Grain of Sand
The world in a grain of sand: as part of today’s Total Immersion in the music of George Walker, Guildhall Musicians perform his songs and chamber music.