Helen Walker-Hill

Helen Walker-Hill (née Siemens; May 26, 1936 – August 8, 2013) was a Canadian pianist and musicologist who specialised in the music of Black women composers.

Life Helen Walker-Hill was born on May 26, 1936, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She received her early musical training from her mother, Margaret Siemens, and continued piano studies with Emma Endres Kountz in Toledo, Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toledo in 1957. She was a Fulbright fellow and studied with Nadia Boulanger at the École Normale de Musique de Paris in France, graduating in 1958. From 1993 to 1998 she was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wyoming. From 1981 to 1991 she was married to Robert Hadley Hill.

In 1992, Greenwood Press published Walker-Hill’s Piano Music by Black Women Composers: A Catalog of Solo and Ensemble Works. In 2005 the CBMR received a $94,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to compile a detailed finding aid to the Helen Walker-Hill Collection as part of a project to inventory the papers of three major women scholars: Eileen Southern, Dena Epstein, and Helen Walker-Hill. In 2006, Walker-Hill consulted with the CBMR on the production of a concert of piano, vocal, and chamber works from her collection.

Chapters

Recordings Kaleidoscope: Music by African-American Women (with Gregory Walker) (Leonarda: LE 339, 1995)