Charles Lucien Lambert
*The birth of Charles Lucien Lambert is celebrated on this date in 1828. Also known as Lucien Lambert, Sr., he was a Black pianist, music teacher, and composer.
Born a free Black Creole in New Orleans. His father was Charles-Richard Lambert, a native of New York, and his wife, a free Creole African woman. They were a very musical family. Free people of color constituted a special class in New Orleans, with privileges not available to free Blacks in other areas. After his mother's death, his father married Coralie Suzanne Orzy, a free Creole woman. They had a son Sidney Lambert, born in 1838, and the half-brothers learned to be musicians together.
Young Lambert married a French woman. Their son Lucien-Léon Guillaume Lambert, born in 1858, became a musician and composer, more well-known than his father. He was sometimes called Lucien Lambert Fils (son), and his work is often confused with his father's. Together with the work of the violinist and composer Edmond Dédé, Lucien-Leon Lambert's compositions are considered classics of Romantic Creole music. Lambert's brother Sidney also became a noted pianist and composer. Because of American racism, Lambert moved to France with his family in 1854, working as a composer and musician.
Sometime in the 1860s, he moved his family to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he was associated with French music that some historians called a French musician. Lambert had a piano and music store in the city. He also became part of the Brazilian National Institute of Music. In 1869 he greeted Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a contemporary French Creole whom he had known as a fellow musician in New Orleans. Lambert and his son Lucien played in one of Gottschalk's massive works, calling for 31 pianists to play together. Noted students include Ernesto Nazareth.
Charles Lambert died in Rio in 1896. He is sometimes listed as Lucien Lambert père (father), and his works are often confused with his son's. The Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris holds numerous of his compositions.
