WFMT | Robert Nathaniel Dett: Cinnamon Grove, Movement I — performed by Joshua Mhoon @WFMTChicago | Uploaded April 2021 | Updated October 2024, 20 hours ago.
17-year-old Chicagoan Joshua Mhoon has a lot of Robert Nathaniel Dett’s music in his repertoire. Mhoon is a Lang Lang Young Scholar and performed at the 2019 inauguration of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. He first appeared on WFMT at age 12 on 'Introductions,' and in February 2021, he recorded the first movement of Dett’s 'Cinnamon Grove' for the WFMT special broadcast 'Cello and Piano Music by Black Composers.'

Robert Nathaniel Dett was born in Ontario in 1882 and moved to upstate New York as a child. Studying at Oberlin, at Eastman, at Harvard with Arthur Foote, and at the Fontainebleu Schools with Nadia Boulanger, Dett lived and worked all over the United States as a choir director, pianist, and composer. His oratorio 'The Ordering of Moses' was broadcast nationwide on NBC Radio, and the “Juba” movement from his piano suite 'In the Bottoms' was recorded by Percy Grainger.