Artina McCain, Piano
Hailed by The New York Times as a "virtuoso pianist," Artina McCain brings to our Juneteenth stage a career devoted to exactly what this program celebrates: the music of the African diaspora, lifted up with artistry, scholarship, and love.
Her credits include performances at Wigmore Hall and the Barbican Centre in London and Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, along with guest appearances with the Dallas and Memphis Symphony Orchestras. A three-time Global Music Awards winner, her recordings include I, Too (Naxos), an acclaimed album of African American spirituals and art songs, and Heritage. In 2021, Hal Leonard published her transcriptions of Twenty-Four Traditional African American Folk Songs. In 2026 the Frances Clark Center will publish her edition of Joseph Joubert virtuosic spirituals — placing this music directly into the hands of the next generation of pianists and bringing it to the concert stage.
Dr. McCain is Associate Professor of Piano at the University of Memphis and Co-Founder/Director of the Memphis International Piano Festival and Competition. But it is her life's work championing the spiritual that makes her presence in Free at Last? feel less like a booking and more like a homecoming.
Pianist Artina McCain on the Power of the Spiritual
We sat down with Artina ahead of her Jacksonville arrival in June for our Juneteenth Celebration: Free at Last. The Evolution of the American Spiritual
RCP: Your album I, Too and your published transcriptions of African American folk songs have placed the spiritual at the center of your recording and publishing life. What first drew you to this music — and what keeps calling you back?
Artina: I was a conservatory student when a mentor challenged me to seek out the music of African American composers — and I realized how little of it I had been given. When I finally sat with this repertoire, it felt like coming home to something I had always known. The spiritual is our inheritance. What keeps calling me back is that the music never runs out — every time I return to these melodies, they reveal something new about who we were and who we are.
RCP: As a pianist, you carry the spiritual without words. How do you make the piano "sing" a melody born in the human voice?
Artina: That's the beautiful challenge. The piano can't breathe, so I have to breathe through it. When I play these transcriptions, I'm always hearing the voice underneath — the bend of a phrase, the weight of a word that isn't there. My hope is that even without the text, listeners feel the prayer inside the melody. The words live in the music itself.
RCP: Our Juneteenth program asks a question — Free at Last? — and holds joy and resistance side by side. Where do you find that tension living in the music?
Artina: It's in every measure. These songs were created by people who had every reason for despair and chose to sing anyway. That choice — to make beauty inside of bondage — is itself an act of resistance. When I play a spiritual, the joy and the sorrow aren't separate voices. They're the same voice. That's what makes this music unlike anything else in the world.
RCP: Your published transcriptions were written for beginning and intermediate pianists. Why was it important that young students encounter this music early?
Artina: Because representation begins at the first lesson. Every young pianist is immersed in European standard repertoire. But they should also grow up knowing the rich heritage of the American spirituals "Wade in the Water" and "Sometimes I Feel" right beside them. When a child learns this music early, it's not "other" music. It's simply theirs.
