Context and Creativity: William Grant Still in Los Angeles

Since New York and the East Coast were, in his opinion, stifling, Los Angeles became the most ideal urban city in the United States for him to live, initially because of work opportunities (i.e., Hollywood) and social environment, but also he loved the physical setting. Since Los Angeles has been one of most culturally diverse cities in United States, if not the world, since its founding, the city provided a context for him to enlarge the vocabulary of idioms he chose for composi- tions.