Renowned today as a prominent African-American in Music Theater and the Arts community, composer, conductor, and violinist Will Marion Cook was a key figure in the development of American music from the 1890s to the 1920s. In this insightful biography, Marva Griffin Carter offers the first definitive look at this pivotal life's story, drawing on both Cook's unfinished autobiography and his wife Abbie's memoir.

A violin virtuoso, Cook studied at Oberlin College (his parents' alma mater), Berlin's Hochschule fur Musik with Joseph Joachim, and New York's national Conservatory of Music with...