The Rome Prize will allow me to take the crucial next step in an interdisciplinary career designed to integrate sound with visual imagery and text. At the American Academy, I plan to write a substantial book about the repertoire and continuum of pianist/composers with which I am most associated as a performer, recording artist, writer, archivist, and curator. Tentatively titled, “Keys to the Highway: Nineteenth-Century African American Pianists on the Road to Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” the book promises to fill an important gap in the public’s understanding of the foundational contributions of these largely forgotten Black musicians. It will also provide me with an opportunity to flesh out my hard-won ideas, acquired over decades engaged with keyboard works I have mined from an obscure corner of the piano repertoire, more fully and permanently than is possible in my concerts and recordings.