Zenobia Powell Perry (1908 - 2004)

Zenobia Powell Perry was born in 1908 in Boley, Oklahoma and lived in Wilberforce, Ohio where she taught at Central State University from 1955 until her retirement in 1982. She received her musical training from Tuskegee Institute, the University of Northern Colorado, and the University of Wyoming; her composition teachers included Robert Nathaniel Dett and Darius Milhaud. Among honors bestowed on her is a Distinguished Alumna Award from the University of Wyoming in 1998. She has composed a mass, an opera, Tawawa House, pieces for band and orchestra, as well as chamber works and piano pieces, including Homage, published in Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music 1893-1993 (Hildegard Publishing Company 1992).