the pulse of life for Clarice Thompson

For Clarice L. Thompson music is more than an entertainment vehicle. She sees it as a means of acknowledging the innate dignity of all human beings. To her, music and song tell the stories of people, touch the heart, and tells the world that we are all worthy of respect and living full, positive lives.

“I seek first to understand and encourage all I come in contact with to do the same. My personal method of empowerment is through music . . . a friend of mine captured what I do in a very simple yet complex phrase . . . ‘reaching peace through music’. It is my life and pedagogical philosophy that music is at the core of our existence and that music is happening even when we do not realize it,” Thompson says.

While in her forties, Thompson completed her undergraduate degree in music at Lane College, an historically Black College in Tennessee. She then enrolled at the University of Mississippi, Oxford where she earned her masters and doctorate in music history and music theory, at age 50, making her the first Black woman to receive this degree at Mississippi.

An accomplished musicologist, educator, composer and entertainer, Thompson is the music director for Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University. And from 2002 to 2009, she was a visiting lecturer of Africana Studies at Brown. She is an artist-in-resident at the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School and the Providence Black Repertory Company. She is the founder and director of RPM Voices of RI.

RPM Voices of RI is a choir that evolves out of a music workshop that is offered annually. Since the first workshop and chorus held in 2003, over 100 voices from the Rhode Island community ranging in age from 13-94 have come together to sing and share musically and culturally.  

Jodi L. Glass, director of audiology, community activist and RPM participant says, “Clarice established a setting where through music and performance, individuals who never knew each other and most often shared highly different backgrounds, came together in a true spirit of cooperation, sharing, listening, learning and growth.”