William Grant Still, often called the "Dean of African-American Composers," was born in Woodville, Mississippi, and grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. His mother was a high school English teacher. Still started learning violin at age 14 and taught himself to play several other instruments, showing skill with the cello and oboe. In 1911, he went to Wilberforce University in Ohio, where he gained experience conducting the school band and making his first compositions and arrangements. Inspired by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, he decided to focus on composing concert music and opera. Still's career included many important firsts. He was the first African-American composer to have a symphony played by a professional U.S. orchestra, with his Symphony no. 1 "Afro-American" premiered by Howard Hanson and the Rochester Philharmonic in 1930. The New York Philharmonic performed it at Carnegie Hall in 1935. In 1936, Still became the first African-American to conduct a major U.S. symphony orchestra when he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His opera Troubled Island was the first by an African-American shown by a major opera company, the New York City Opera in 1949, and it was also the first African-American-composedoperaToCountries,SouthAllYour.nationallyOnTelevised. While Still did not write many works for solo voice and piano, those he created are highly regarded. He set poems from key Harlem Renaissance poets like Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen to music. He also used poetry by his second wife, Verna Arvey, who was a skilled writer and pianist and wrote libretti for most of his operas. One of his major works is the song cycle "Songs of Separation," which includes poems by Dunbar, Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Haitian poet Philipps Thoby-Marcelin, featuring a shared literary theme within a unified musical structure. Similar to his"0pDiveSymphony1,"heUsedJazzAndBluesLanguageToExpressThe"otherness"InInThePoetry.