Roberta Flack with her Grammy Award for her performance of “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” in Los Angeles, March 4, 1974. HAROLD FILAN/AP
Through her performance, she put her mark on a number of songs that have become soul classics, such as “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” American singer, pianist and composer Roberta Flack died on Monday, February 24, at the age of 88. A statement issued by the trade magazine Variety did not give the cause or place of death, but said the singer had “died peacefully surrounded by her family.”

Born on February 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, North Carolina, Roberta Cleopatra Flack was raised in a musical environment: Her father, who worked for the US Veterans Administration, played the piano, and her mother was an organist in several churches in Arlington, Virginia, where the family settled. Flack learned to play the piano from an early age, accompanying choirs and singing on occasion. At the age of 15, she won a scholarship to study music and classical singing at Howard University in Washington, DC, where she also directed the university’s choir. After graduating, she began teaching music at the age of 19, obtaining a position at a high school in Farmville, North Carolina.

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