Kingsborough Community College music lecturer Christopher L. Thompson has been awarded the San Francisco Symphony’s Emerging Black Composers Project Michael Morgan Prize.
As part of the award, the San Francisco Symphony will perform the world premiere of Thompson’s commissioned work—the first known concerto for notated rap and orchestra—during its 2027-2028 season at Davies Symphony Hall.
In addition to the premiere, Thompson, who performs professionally as “Master Christopher,” will receive a $15,000 commissioning fee, mentorship from EBCP committee members, and resources to workshop his piece with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a supporting partner of the program.
“This has been a dream of mine for quite a while,” Thompson said in a statement. “I’m excited to get to work and to show the world what can happen with rap notation.”
Rap notation is a form of musical composition in which the spoken lyric is treated like any other instrument in a score, Thompson said.
“I wanted to create a work that still feels like classical music, that also feels like rap; where the music is not an accompaniment, not background, but where there is equal dialogue between the rapper and the music," he said.
Thompson began developing his genre-defying blend of classical, Hip Hop, jazz, and marching band as a way to respond to racial injustice highlighted by the murder of George Floyd.
Thompson joined the Kingsborough faculty in 2023. He teaches courses in music and jazz, and will begin teaching an introductory Hip Hop class this fall while he pursues a doctor of musical arts degree at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
