Michael Morgan, Music Director, Oakland Symphony
"We are making great strides in classical music." I hear that all the time about African-Americans. But at the same time the strides are all singers, and female singers at that.
There’s not any kind of hostility any more. It’s just that people don’t conceive that we can put these kinds of people in these roles in the music business. And it’s not just conductors of color. It’s women, also. It’s not because the people in charge harbor any hostility for any group of people. It just hasn’t occurred to them, even now.
There are [black] people on conducting staffs, assistants, that sort of thing. But when the board of directors has to choose someone who will be the physical representation of an orchestra, it’s hard to go out on the limb. A lot of these people who do make it through to any level of success, these people have to be mighty good and mighty determined. There’s really not a network for them to cruise on. They have to pretty much claw their way up.
When I was growing up, I didn’t need role models who looked like me. I was raised to think I could do anything anyone else did. However, once you start in, you need some allies. I’ve had some really helpful people who’ve tried to shepherd me through the business of conducting. Sergei Commissiona was one. Henry Fogel shepherded me through the experience in Chicago for many years, when I was assistant conductor. I guest-conducted the National Symphony. I conducted at the New York City Opera for two years.
I have a couple of fairly significant issues that I have had to deal with in terms of having the big conducting career. One, I got a lot of engagements when I was very, very young from competitions, etc. I would be the first person to admit that the results were uneven. It takes a while to get over that. Of course, if you’re in the pipeline, you can be carried along. Two of my big advocates, one lives on London, Solti, and one is gone, Bernstein. Only now that I’ve turned 40, I look at the conducting and think it’s pretty good on a regular basis now. Somebody has to be patient until you get to that point.
Two, I occasionally open my mouth on a social and political issue. I’ll give you a little example. I gave a talk at Grant Makers in the Arts, at their annual convention. There’s a problem with symphony orchestras and getting their audiences more diverse. It’s so acute, you have to name names.
Far more controversial was my attempt to change the direction of our friends at the Nation of Islam. I conducted when Farrakhan played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. His following is exactly the segment of the young black community that somebody has got to get the attention of. If those young people saw him playing the violin and learned he’d been playing the violin his whole life, that would make them think differently about European culture and its place in their education.
You talk to him for two minutes, and you realize that the actual person is far more complicated than what you get on Nightline. I was not for one moment expecting to get white America to see Lewis Farrakhan differently. He thinks music education is vital. For a few days in there, we even got him to turn the ship in a more productive direction.
I will speak out on whatever. My feeling is that there’s only so far any of us, that is black conductors, can get at this moment that we might as well try to do as much good as we can. My main mission now is pulling not the usual people into concert halls. You can’t go anyplace in Oakland without hearing people say they appreciate what we’re doing. I hear that in the schools, in the streets. This is my 7th year here. I learned how to do this when I changed the attitudes of minorities toward the Chicago Symphony. Henry Fogel is genuinely interested. It’s hard to get other people seriously interested. The work is very slow, building up an audience. You have to go to them many times before they believe you really want to do it, and you’re not just there because you just got a grant.
People in Oakland said, "He’ll just do it for a little while." But now people really believe. We changed from an 1800-seat hall to the main hall, 3000 seats. It’s practically full every time we play.
I go into individual classrooms. If I only get to 40 schools in a year, it’s a year I’ve taken off. I’m going as many days as I can. Yesterday I was at one of the magnet schools, Cole School for the Performing Arts. It’s a school I’ve gone to many times. I’m on their advisory board. It’s in a very inner-city neighborhood. I’ve talked to them many times about music. I never had a chance to talk to them about career planning. We did a big graph on the board, subjects they have to study. I asked them to name careers, why you have to know these subjects for those careers. I wanted them to try to come up with a career where you didn’t have to know these things, not just talking about music. They can start in a public school where they go to, and wind up doing something unusual, like conducting an orchestra. It makes them and their families less reluctant to visit the orchestra.
Every year we have various kinds of side by side concerts. We bring everybody’s kids on the stage to play with us. Last night, we played a black history concert for the biggest church in town. 12 members of the orchestra. We play the instrumental repertory of the black music repertory ensemble. Montague Ring – an English black composer. The Amanda Aldridge string quintet. We gave the history of the composers. We played three marches by Alton Adams, the first black bandmaster of the US Navy, who conducted the first integrated band. He had marches played by the Sousa band. Frank Johnson had a band that toured Europe in the 1830s. People were taking notes, astounded by the story of the composers. All the musicians were white. They love doing this stuff.
We took the Chicago Symphony to the South Side, too. The American orchestra members are willing to go, because they know it needs to be done, even if they have enormous reservations even about going to the place. Once you cross the threshold and they see the welcome they get, they’re instantly bonded for life.
This is what I want to do for American orchestras. If I can go to a big orchestra and take them into some community that they haven’t gone into, and show them how incredible the experience can be, you’re not compromising art, you’re expanding it. That’s my dream life. Community building is something that an even moderately enlightened orchestra is well equipped to help do.
People feel so alienated from classical music. The white audience feels alienated, and the black audience feels doubly alienated. It’s a double bind. Back in the ‘20s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, we were getting excellent training. Now we’re allowed to be in the orchestras, but we’re not getting the training. The older generation feels hostile. In Chicago, there were people in the middle, upper-class black community who love classical music, but had never been in Orchestra Hall.
Affirmative action is not possible for classical music. I wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times that said that. It’s not possible because classical music is not something you can learn to do as an adult. If you could, then there would be the possibility of affirmative action.
There’s a very good example of how to solve the problem at the Chicago Youth Symphony. There were maybe two black kids in this 100-piece symphony orchestra. Jeannette Kreston started a second orchestra to address the fact that the kids in the city schools didn’t have access to music education like kids in the suburbs do. Instead of wringing her hands, she did something the only way you can, which is to make sure people are getting the training and don’t fall out of the pipeline.
The Chicago Symphony has no official tie to this youth orchestra which is solving the problem. The links in the chain could be completed. [Jeanette Kreston thinks the same thing. But Henry Fogel, Executive Director of the Chicago Symphony, disagrees.]
Some of the orchestras have a screened first round of auditions and a not-screened second round. If a black player made it into the second round, they’d have a hard time not being hired.
I had a young [black] singer friend in New York named Ronald Smith, a Mozart sort of tenor. He would talk about how different the reaction would be between the tape he sent and when he shows up.
Henry Fogel, Executive Director, Chicago Symphony
The pool of black instrumental players is very small. My personnel manager tells me that in a typical audition of 150 people, one or two will be African-American. I think we have to be honest that in this field, too, there was discrimination. It was as overt as the rest of society, and probably went on until late in the ‘50s. It is hardly surprising that a pattern was established, that it was felt that it is not a field for them. The burden is on those of us in the field to change that. I would kill to have a black in this orchestra. We’ve got to find a way to solve this problem. Most people can’t look at an all-white orchestra without thinking it’s deliberate.
The issue is broader than the population of the orchestra. The issue for us now is how do we make what we are relevant to a variety of the minority communities, the Hispanic community, too. We don’t do it by changing what we are. We will not go into a black church on Martin Luther King’s birthday and do a gospel concert. I find it offensive from every point of view. We don’t do that music as well as they do, and the message we convey is that they don’t like Beethoven.
I’ll be very candid with you. We haven’t been as aggressive as we should have been in establishing these networking efforts. A year and a half ago we hired a consulting firm, Bill Terry & Associates. They were hired specifically to help us come to grips with all kinds of diversity issues. One of the things they’ve helped us do is develop some of these plans that we’re late in doing.
It’s a little bit difficult to move an institution like the Chicago Symphony that’s enjoying great success. But we have to get ahead of the curve, and not wait until the pickets are in front.
The Chicago Civic Orchestra [run by the Chicago Symphony] is 75 years old. Before it held national auditions, it did tend to function as a feeder into the Chicago Symphony. 31 or 32 of our members have played in the Civic. We don’t favor the Civic candidates, but they trained with members of the Symphony
If you’re in the Civic, you can get scholarship money for the concerts and rehearsals you perform. The Civic has sectional rehearsals with members of the Symphony, sectionals with CSO principals. They do six concerts with attendant rehearsals, more than the four that professional orchestras would have.
We have three African-Americans in the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and are hoping to increase that next year. We are actively seeking them.
We have contact with all the youngsters who are in the Musical Assistance Program. We’re working with the National Black Music Caucus, and the Ford Foundation database. We do special mailings to the deans of African-American colleges.
[Here he's responding to criticism from Jeannette Kreston, who wishes the Chicago Symphony would hook up with her own Chicago Youth Symphony.]There are other youth orchestras in this area. We are doing so many things now that we don’t think we can take another thing on. I wouldn’t consider the fact that we don’t have a relationship with the Chicago Youth Symphony a criticism, but just a statement of fact. The Chicago Civic Orchestra has people from college, graduate school, and post graduate. [Daniel] Barenboim [music director of the Chicago Symphony] wants to attract the best players nationally, and not be fed from anywhere.
[Dorothy Jackson, a black woman in Chicago, had wondered if the Chicago Symphony -- which hasn't a single African-American member -- purposely doesn’t hire black musicians] I think that’s a logical conclusion one could draw from going to the concerts, and seeing the stage. I think if I came from her perspective I’d probably share that view.
[About black men in opera:] It is certainly obvious that no black male has achieved the stature in opera that black females have, and one has to ask why.
Norman Johns, cellist, Cincinnati Symphony
I started playing cello in Philly, age of nine. Every high school had a full orchestra fed by a full music program in junior highs and elementary schools. Now we have centralized arts schools. But on the fringes, there may be a kid in fourth grade who doesn’t recognize that he has a gift.
When I was a kid, they picked the tallest kid to be the cellist. Now I’m 6’5". They asked, "Do you want to play a cello?" I said, "What is it?" I’d never seen one. I liked the look at it, it was shiny and red. We had professionals come in to coach string quartet.
In my youth, my teens, there were riots all over the country, the black power movement. I finished high school in ‘68. I had serious questions about should I go into classical music, should I try the jazz thing? I was petty bodacious back then. I very boldly approached Alice Coltrane, asked if they need another cello player.
I heard Bobby Seale and Stokely and all those guys speak. Martin and Malcolm. All these things were bombarding my head. I had conflicts with my parents over the huge ‘fro and all it represented. But I always knew who I was, and it was incumbent on me to let the society know who I was, and that I too am a citizen. I accepted the challenge of integrating, honing my skills, integrating within me first.
I played with the New World Symphony in New York, and I met Kermit Moore. The only other black musicians I knew about were Andre Watts, who’s from West Philly, as I am also. He’s a legend in Philly. When I saw him playing the Lizst concerto on TV with Bernstein, wow, that was really something. I didn't know any other black cellists. I never had a black music teacher, except the woman who taught me piano at the age of seven at the church down the street.
When I joined the musicians’ union in ‘69, there were two unions in Philadelphia. It wasn't set up to be white and black, but it kinda worked out that way. I used the so-called white union, Local 77, because I thought my instrument would be required for Eurocentric gigs.
I was teaching then, and I didn't have time to do the orchestra, opera, ballet gigs, because they rehearsed when I was teaching. But Aretha Franklin was playing a club in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She was going to cancel if there were not more blacks in the orchestra. She had a full string section for her charts. We had folks from New York and up in DC coming down to fill up the string section. And that was the beginning of mass networking, folks beginning to know each other.
There were attempts to create all-black orchestras to tour. The Rockefellers put together the music assistance fund, adjudicated by the New York Philharmonic. The fund was set up to aid the education of African-American musicians and other minorities, to train for orchestral careers. You could get undergraduate tuition, or grants to study orchestral repertory before an audition. That sort of thing was very helpful.
The fund is now adjudicated by the American Symphony Orchestra League. I’ve been adjudicating the audition process in Cincinnati. The focus is now specifically for African-Americans, where the need is most extreme. We changed the parameters to include younger students, ninth grade up. I always had to have a job, couldn't take advantages of summer music camps.
When Take 6 performed with our orchestra, we had an 80% black audience. I was overwhelmed. The whole idea is to bring the black community into Music Hall. The hall has a whole mystique, it says, "I am a Eurocentric place." We have to say, "This is an American place."
We're talking about the music of dead white men. Some of it is philosophically relevant.
I teach younger kids, elementary to high school. I also teach at Xavier University. I enjoy working with the younger kids. I'm still in tune enough with the stuff that they're into. I can tap that energy and show them how they can express it on string instruments. Sometimes I just sit down and do some improvisation with them. It’s my philosophy that the cello should be humanized, and is capable of playing anything
Joseph Striplin, violinist, Detroit Symphony
As an African-American violinist, I have two tracks. On one I function purely as a musician, with issues any musician has to face. Then interpersonal and social situations, they form another track. I've found the sledding is generally smooth. But every now and then something will come up which points out that there are differences between myself and some of my colleagues. On certain issues, the average white person has a different point of view. A lot of my colleagues tend to be more conservative. They might have a different feeling about affirmative action. Sometimes I'm a little unhappy that the white majority doesn't know more about the reality of black life than they do.
I went through a period of time when I thought there were no differences, except the way up was harder. A lot of people I knew who I came up with in the black community, they were unhappy with my views, because I said there was no discrimination. Then some of my colleagues were saying they thought black players would bring down the quality of the orchestra.
I came from a classic mom-headed family. I’m not a product of the black middle class. My mother had what we would call mainstream values. I had a good church background. I was brought up to be a good boy, to have love for learning. My mother grew up in Alabama. Because of her, really, I was able to get a good start that would have held me in good standing whatever field I went into.
Another chance factor was the Detroit public school system. It was strong in terms of music. Every high school had an orchestra, every middle school had an orchestra. I started taking violin in middle school, then went to an arts high school. Then I went to college and started studying regularly with a member of the Detroit Symphony first violin section.
My first position was with the Metropolitan Opera National Company. Then the Indianapolis Symphony, four years in St. Louis, then Detroit. I had an unusual path to a professional orchestra. I didn't even own my own instrument till I was 16, and went to college. Then my mother bought a violin. I used school instruments before that. But the college didn't make violins available.
I've gotten a chance to play some interesting chamber orchestra concerts around the city. The contractors want a black, and I’m the most known black violinist around the city. I had a couple of advantages when I came here, got to solo on some young peoples' concerts, got a chance to stand up and show that I can play. Other people weren't being showcased. But then they didn't have the hardships I had coming up.
Blacks realize that you can't have every single concert with a United Nations look. But in certain special concerts, there has to be black representation.
Jeannette Kreston, executive director, Chicago Youth Symphony
When I took this job 11 years ago, I could see what was going to happen. The Youth Symphony was going to be all white kids, all middle class. I didn't think Chicago public schools were going to change easily. They weren't going to reinstitute the arts.
We used to have a single youth orchestra, but the feeder system was coming from the suburbs. We decided to develop our own feeder system. We started a training orchestra, the Chicago Youth Concert Orchestra. It was a small string group originally. It's been going now about eight years, and it’s now a full orchestra, with 65 members. We partnered with a local program, the Merit Music Program, a tuition-free conservatory that focuses on inner-city minority students. We really targeted recruitment in the inner city. The good news is that the group is wonderfully diverse, kids from housing projects sharing a music stand with kids from the wealthy suburbs. There are no barriers there. Music breaks all barriers.
What we're trying to do is get these kids trained at an earlier level, so they can advance into he senior orchestra, and then go forth into the professional ranks. We’ve gotten 12 kids into the senior orchestra. We have a mentorship program. We take selected students from our senior orchestra, and they go in and mentor these younger kids. We take some of them out and work with them, kid to a kid, which is less threatening than an adult coming in.
We go out into the schools. We chose two inner city schools, both 100% African-American. We take these student ensembles into these schools, to play for these kids on their turf. We go 8 to 10 times to each school.
These are selected schools where the Merit Music Program has some beginning string programs. We've obviously had discussions with the principal beforehand, asking them to be supportive, to do some of these things with the kids, to play the tape recordings that we give them. We give free tickets to concerts. Lots of these kids never leave the community at all.
We don't work with a huge group in the school. We only work with five classrooms. Student musicians go into the classes. As you go repeatedly, you break down some of the hostility. There tends to be more interest as time goes on.
I can remember for example that when we were doing the William Grant Still piece, the school hadn't made a commitment to go to a concert. But we had third and fourth graders coming up to the teachers to ask them to pick them up to take them to the concert.
You have to really develop a support system. One of the mothers told me -- her daughter was in the senior orchestra, and is now in Harvard – the kids would say, "Why are you playing their music?" You have to take kids who are strong enough.
You have to build a support system for their families. Many of the families are single-parent families. We have a parents organization. The woman who's head of it is an African-American, whose niece is in the orchestra
You’ve also got to play more diverse repertoire. We played a piece by George Walker [a black composer who won the Pulitzer Prize]. We did a whole series on the Harlem renaissance. We did William Grant Stills’s Afro-American Symphony. We brought his daughter in from Arkansas.
The Chicago Symphony? Personally, I think they’ve made a couple of grand gestures, but they won't have much impact. They should connect with organizations like mine. I've made several overtures. They’re a whole big bureaucracy that's difficult to move. We could just start with a link with their Civic Orchestra. They have this wonderful new symphony center. It’s a $105 million building project. It would be nice to put some educational programming in there. [Henry Fogel, Executive Director of the Chicago Symphony, had an answer.]
Dorothy Jackson, teacher; head, Chicago Youth Concert Orchestra parents’ association
The popular music is really so strong and so pervasive that classical music is esoteric to most African-American kids. They don't even know when they listen to classical scores when they're watching the movies.
Up to about 25 years ago, music was taught in the schools. They’d take piano, learn about classical music. Now in the schools you don't have to have music. Some schools might have bands. There’s little classical music appreciation in American homes, and especially African-American homes.
Classical music costs -- the real music costs.
I come from a family of 12 children. My father came to Chicago, studied at the American College of Music. He was into music and a choir director and minister of music at his church. My mother played a little piano, there was always a piano in my house. My mother liked English literature. We were given a kind of culture. I started piano when I was five years old, my father played a little piano. We had a home where there was music. My father always said, culture is the best thing in life. At the age of 12 I started playing the violin. I went on to college, played the violin in the orchestra.
My niece Euletta -- her father has a degree in music from Florida A&M. Her mother plays the organ. My niece went to Montessori school, was offered violin. This orchestra is helping her greatly. She also plays in the Southside Chamber Orchestra, a black orchestra. It's very small, and the people are quite old. They’re people from the old school. She’s also in a teen ensemble that meets Saturday at 4 PM.
Many of the African-Americans are getting interested because Jeanette Kreston allowed them in [to the Chicago Youth Concert Orchestra and the Chicago Youth Symphony]. She's exposing them to so much. She spends her time thinking of ways to get these children involved. She’s always got some little program to get the African-American parents involved. She talks to them about more exposure. "Go with them. Take them somewhere. Take your children to concerts." She tries to arrange programs where people go into the schools and talk to the students. She's bending backwards to involve the African-Americans.
There are young gifted African-American musicians. But many of them, they lose interest along the way. Sometimes I wonder whether there's a silent agreement that African-Americans won't be in the Chicago Symphony. But they never seem to make it. One might sit in, in place of someone. [Henry Fogel, Executive Director of the Chicago Symphony, is surprisingly sympathetic.]
Kevin Smoot, Community Relations Director, St. Louis Symphony
We have a partnership between the orchestra and principally African-American churches. We started in 1992, with five congregations. They were proposed through the black clergy coalition, which selected the initial churches. Today we have grown to 24 member organizations. We have a waiting list of ten churches.
It’s a mutually beneficial situation. There’s no charge or fee. One of the benefits is that each organization receives a one-hour free concert in church by Symphony musicians. They started off as purely classical. But we’ve broadened our horizons. Our musicians lead regular lives. Rather than a purely classically driven program, they’ll play everything from Bach to Thelonious Monk. That’s a great connector, breaking down barriers. Almost the entire orchestra is involved. They’re willing to share their time and talents to go out into the community. A lot of them want to branch out and learn more about themselves, and by their nature they give anyway. We have a community partnership program, a voluntary program that the musicians can participate in. They acquire points by participating. If they get enough, they get time off. A large portion of our orchestra participates.
One of the benefits is that the organizations have to sell 100 tickets in the course of the year to the orchestral season. They’re deeply discounted.
We also have the St. Louis Symphony In Unison Chorus, principally African-American, 120 voices. As a result of all this, the attendance base of minorities, principally African-American, has increased tremendously. Also hall rentals. There’s broad participation across the board in virtually every facet of the symphony, even volunteering.
The artistic department is conscious of having a broad spectrum of soloists coming in. More African-Americans will attend if Awadagin Pratt or Andre Watts play. Those are becoming more familiar to a larger population in the African-American community. And we've been extremely successful in working with the major artists that come to the Symphony, taking them into the community. We engaged Terrence Wilson, a 21 year-old African-American pianist. We took him into the community. He started playing at the Herbert Hoover Girls and Boys Club. He started with the Nintendo theme. Marietta Simpson was quoted in the New Republic magazine, that she did not feel comfortable being on a Classically Black series. I had some conversation with her because they wrote a column on her in the St. Louis American newspaper. I took her to the community, and she wound up singing at a church service. She got a standing ovation. Now she’s done a 180 degree turn.
This is still an emerging process for all orchestras, even for ours. But when people make a conscious decision to come together and drop all pretenses, it's incredible. When people and organizations stop making assumptions and actually begin to open their minds and their hearts anything can happen. We receive inquires all the time.
I grew up and still live just a matter of blocks from Powell Hall. I’ve always been extremely involved in the black community. For years, we as a people -- unfortunately this is a national phenomenon -- we've been shut out, we've been excluded, not just from orchestras, but from virtually every institution. But this orchestra is no different from any other orchestra. It’s just getting around to waking up. It’s located in the heart of the African-American community.
Our music school has seven locations around town, and I do mean around town. The principal location is not far from here, the old conservatory, now the St. Louis Symphony Community Music School. One of our locations is directly in the heart of the black community.
There is no such thing as "their" music. For an individual to have an interest in a seemingly foreign instrument says a lot about that individual, or their home life.
John Mason, Chairman and President, The Monsanto Fund, St. Louis
We have funded the community outreach project of the St. Louis Symphony for seven years now. It has really been quite successful in terms of changing the tone and complexion of both the attendee composition at concerts as well as creating a much better understanding between the community and the orchestra.
When we went through the rash of church burnings last year, in a period of less than two weeks the St. Louis Symphony agreed to put on a benefit concert to raise money for burned churches. They filled the concert hall. We sort of chuckled within the [black] community, asking whether other major orchestras would have had so much success in that time frame. There’s truly a strong bond between the African-American community and the orchestra.
The orchestra has worked particularly hard to make that happen. It has done a lot of work through black churches. The Clergy Coalition is an assembly of black pastors. The orchestra has bonded with this group, doing many concerts in churches in conjunction with Sunday worship services. The orchestra also created a mini-series that they call "Classically Black." It focuses on African-American performers or composers. This makes the orchestra and its music more user-friendly. An interest in community outreach was even a factor in the selection of a new music director.
A good part of this was the real push of the Monsanto Fund to build a real sense of connectedness within the community. We were intrigued by some work that had gone on in a pilot instance in Baltimore and Philadelphia. The logic I used with myself and with the foundation board was really related to marketing. I felt there's an entire untapped market of attendees that gets missed because most symphonic orchestras don’t go after this market.
The people who promote classical music don’t do a good job making minority groups feel that it's OK to participate. You first want to go where you feel comfortable. If you don't feel it's a comfortable place, or the people who frequent a place seem to be different from you, then it's tough making your way there. Minority groups have not felt wanted.
St. Louis was somewhat typical of most major urban areas in that the orchestras and other classical music venues didn’t rely on or know that much about their constituent neighbors.
Donald Suggs, Editor and Publisher, St. Louis American
There have been some real successes. One should give the orchestra some credit. From where they've come from, there are some concrete gains. They keep surprising me. This is a process that takes a lot of time. The number of African-Americans who would be interested in the symphony on a regular basis is going to be fairly small.
The African-American community is devoted to singing, just as the Russian Jewish community was devoted to the violin. If they’re going to go to the symphony, they need a community they can function in. They don't walk into that music room if they're going to be socially isolated.
I'm pretty outspoken about black issues, but about artistic matters I can't ask the symphony to hire a black cellist, and have a double standard. I can't ask them to put a musician in that doesn't measure up.
You take the top CEOs in St. Louis, you could put them in a nice-sized room. In New York, you'd need an auditorium. I just think it's easier to put African-Americans on the board in smaller communities. You're more likely to find middle-class people on the board.
Mark Volpe, Executive Director, Detroit Symphony
Eight or nine years ago, the orchestra was criticized for being somewhat insensitive. It’s not fair for me to judge, because I wasn’t there. A few steps were taken out of necessity, because the funding was threatened. The orchestra was grappling with a variety of financial challenges, and was very dependent on a state grant. Several state legislators who had raised the issue for several years said that the orchestra didn’t have enough African-Americans
The orchestra had just one African-American as a full-time member. Two members of the African-American caucus in the legislature said they’d use their influence to bar the second half of the state grant if the orchestra didn’t hire a second African-American. The orchestra was on tour, and voted to admit a black bass player who’d been subbing for many years.
If you look at the African-American presence in orchestral instruments you’re talking about less than 1%. All things being equal, the odds are impossible for many to get into professional orchestras. What the music schools will tell you is that there’s a problem with the public schools. It’s still a battle. Our musicians and staff have gone out to school districts to save music programs. It’s a selfish consideration of audience development.
For the long-term viability of the orchestra, we have to provide for the long-term viability of the central corridor in the city. I forced the issue. We had to play a role beyond that of the usual orchestra in the urban recovery of Detroit. To understand an orchestra’s future in the U.S., orchestra administrators have to be urban sociologists. I didn’t want us to be another arts organization in tough times that just says how good we are in Brahms. I wanted to shift our focus outward.
[The orchestra is cooperating with the city to build a medical center.] The medical thing doesn’t make much sense, until you go to Detroit and see a complex of hospitals across from Orchestra Hall. We quietly bought up 9 to 12 acres of land, with board approval. We were also building barriers to keep unwelcome elements away from concertgoers. There were crack houses on the land, within a half-block of the hall. We were buying property initially to protect the hall. Now we’re going to have an office structure, and a 250-seat restaurant. There hasn’t been an office building built on Woodward, the main drag, in 25 years. We did it through conventional financing. The 15 year-lease to the Detroit Medical Center will pay off the mortgage. There’s going to be a parking deck that will support the day use of office building, and the evening and weekend use of the orchestra.
We’re also building a performing arts high school on the other side of the street. The office building is a financial ploy, but the real magic is in the high school. There was a bond issue that got approved in 1994 that contained 30 million dollars to build a public performing arts high school in Detroit. We were able to help encourage that process, and since it’s such a high profile, win-win affair, we’ve been able to move up the schedule. Construction begins in 8 to 10 months. We’re giving several acres of land. The high school will blend right into our hall. We’re also giving them programming, providing our musicians, artists, and staff. We get a quid pro quo – we get joint use of the recital hall that’s going to be part of the high school.
Every artist who’s passed through here, Wynton Marsalis, Yo Yo Ma, Pinchas Zuckerman, got excited about it. The kids in that school will be the hope of Detroit. They’ll have an academic curriculum in the morning, arts in the afternoon. The school will run from 8:30 to 5:30.
Orchestras have refused to place performance in a larger musical context. Basically I’ve laid out the case that we need to be absolutely engaged in music study in the entire community. Does this put the orchestra at risk? The real risk is to do nothing.
Our staff is 35% African-American, our board 20%. It’s easier for us to address racial inequities in the staff and board than it would be in New York. This is a city that’s predominantly African-American. There are very important African-American business leaders, political leaders, and judicial leaders. It’s not hard to recruit strong leaders in the community that happen to be African-American. There’s no suspicion that they’re being recruited as tokens. It’s the same thing as calling on a Caucasian. Are they interested? It’s simply a civic obligation that they’d either like to assume or not.
We have an affirmative action policy for our staff. We screen down to four or five, and when it comes to the final cut, I want to see an African-American. With our musicians, we don’t have an audition if we don’t have an African-American presence in the pool. We’re aggressive in recruiting. It's something that we scrutinize.
We’ve recorded 24 CDs, and two have featured African-American composers. That wasn’t by coincidence. William Grant Still is an important historical figure. Ellington wrote scores.
When I’m sitting with Neeme [Jarvi, the Detroit Symphony’s music director] and looking at a season grid, there are going to be African-American artists, and African-American compositions. We’re not looking at numbers. Six or seven years ago, we had to think about it. Now it just kind of happens.
Laurie Carter, Associate Vice President, Juilliard
Juilliard is a very different place from what it was when I arrived there 10 years ago. Because of the African-American student network, people understand that Juilliard is a much more friendly place for people of color, and come there because of that. We make a special effort. We have an extensive orientation program for all first-year students. It includes interdisciplinary work, plus a few sessions on diversity and multiculturalism. We give the students the opportunity to have a dialogue about how they feel and what their views are in the world on those particular issues. Because they have this at the very beginning of their Juilliard experience, they know that Juilliard is a community that values a global perspective.
In the fall of each year, we have cultural diversity activities. We have a program called "Horizons," open to all members of the community.
We bring in a lot of alumni, and talk about their perspectives on the profession. If that person is a person of color, we try to make sure that students understand that the classical arts are really open and accessible to everyone, despite the fact that you don't see people of color in the orchestras.
Our buddy program allows the African-American students to meet with alumni and talk about what it's like to be a musician. Each month alumni come to Juilliard and meet with students in an informal setting.
For the underrepresented groups, new students are paired with an upperclassman. The non-underrepresented students said, "Hey, this is a wonderful thing. Can we get involved?"
We make very special efforts to reach different populations. We also have programs for students over 21, and for international students. We want to foster a sense of community while meeting everyone's needs. You want to involve people from underrepresented communities in your organization, and accept their criticism.
Joseph [Polisi, Juilliard’s president] is really committed to this. This is a very warm and accepting environment for student and staff. I’m one of those people who's happy every day to go to work.
I don't believe that anyone is doing anything like this at other conservatories. Other institutions might say, "All of our students are treated the same." That means they don't have African-American administrators, and very few African-American students.
I've spent the last year in the public schools, talking to teachers and principals and students. This is a forgotten population. The principals are focusing on kids learning to read. They're forgetting about anything else.
I oversee the outreach activities in Juilliard. We have programs that send students into the schools, and a "Concert Fellows" program that brings kids into the schools for concerts. We bring 250 kids in for a concert. We have Morse fellowships. Graduate students receive a stipend to go out to the schools to teach music appreciation. This reaches 400 kids. A Morse fellow goes into a history class, and integrates music education into the history.
All the Lincoln Center constituents have extensive outreach programs. But there are very few African-Americans involved in running the programs. It’s a matter of perspective. African-Americans are more likely to be told the truth about how a program is working. It's just not PC for a non-black person to urge a black community to do something.
There aren’t many African-Americans involved in classical arts in New York City. As a result, African-Americans are not funding the classical arts. They're not taking the interest. There’s a lot of focus on popular music. This is because they're not welcomed into the classical arts circle
The classical arts world is so insular, and so much based on who people know. When you think about it, how many people of one particular ethnicity have connections outside their ethnic group?
For many African-Americans, classical music simply doesn't exist. It has no relevance to their lives at all, and it's just because they haven't been invited in.
African-Americans today have to recommit themselves because of the situation in our community.
Betty Allen, mezzo-soprano; President Emeritus, Harlem School of the Arts
I’m on the board of the New York City Opera, and we get these questions all the time [about black singers in opera]. And I told them at a board meeting, you have to be above suspicion, you have to be like Caesar’s wife. You can’t depend on your past history, which is absolutely marvelous.
I think opera producers find [black] men threatening and intrusive. I’ve known three or four men [singers] who were married and had families, and said, "I can’t hang around any longer waiting for this to happen. I have to work, and if I can’t work at my craft, I have to do something else."
But my feelings about the City Opera are different. Before Christopher [Keene, the company’s former director] died, I said, "We have to do something different." They hire young black singers, they have an outreach program, they hire young black singers to sing these outreach concerts, they’re making an effort. So I say to them, "I know you people have been historically wonderful about hiring blacks, but I don’t see any up there [in their main productions] now."
My whole thing is, I want to keep pushing people. My theory is that there are too many people [singers] hanging around Harlem doing nothing. And with these wonderful voices, and they will be here 50 years from now with pleats in their ass, and they still will have not sung anywhere. It’s my job to prepare people, to motivate them, and to push them so that they will be ready.
[Now she talks about the Afrocentric view that classical music isn’t for black people.] I sang a concert and the black students out there said, "Why are you singing those spirituals?" And I said, "Nobody tells me what to sing, not even Columbia Artists Management, not even my mother. You people all act like you know everything about being black, and you don’t know a damn thing. I was wearing African cloth material and Yoruba hair style while you were in your panties. So don’t tell me what to do. Look, I made my living singing this music. Do you think I should not have?"
One boy wouldn’t even carry his cello case in the subway. He was scared he’d be attacked. They walk defensively out of their projects. You have got to have a lot of guts to fight for lots of things. Not everyone is prepared or psychologically or emotionally ready to do this, to say "Miss Allen, I don’t hear them, I don’t look at them, I just go."
[She talks about doing community concerts for Columbia Artists.] Some of the people I sang for had never seen a black person. They had never broken bread with one, or had tea with one. They’d talk to me as if I came from some planet somewhere else, as if I was an alien. And I would say to myself, "OK, I’ve changed your mind. That’s good."
I take my position very seriously. I taught at the North Carolina School of the Arts. I made myself available. I had to do something to teach people what to do, because they will never get out of this unless somebody helps them. Well, it got so that any time a black singer came north, she called me. But as I said, I used to feel put upon, from being the black mother of all singers. You learn that you are responsible for your brother, and you try to do something about it.
If you put me on the board, I talk. Maybe they did decide to put a black on the board, I don’t care. I’m not going to sit there submissively and not say anything. I’m very active on the boards I’m on.
I’m very proud of the fact that Carnegie Hall devoted a whole gala benefit to the hundredth anniversary of Marian Anderson’s birth. They made a big point of honoring her.
I think I was instrumental in making the Chamber Music Society hire a black quartet.
[Should there be more blacks on these boards?] If people are really interested in art, you know, and they fill the board requirements, yes. Once I was looking and I had a hard time finding someone to present to Carnegie Hall who would be able to meet the obligation of a board member.
I tell them [the major classical music organizations] to send notices to all the black churches, and the only time they do it is when they have a program they can’t fill the seats for. You’ve got to talk to the churches, you’ve got to talk to the choirs. The choirs are full of wonderful people who are just dying to perform. And the organizations should go back to the churches even when they don’t have something specifically African-American.
The [New York] Philharmonic had done a program where they were told they had to do something in order to achieve a grant. So they decided to do a program on jazz. They got Dexter Gordon, and hired all these wonderful people, and they put on several evenings of jazz at Avery Fisher Hall. They had never solicited this audience. When I came in I said, "Where are the questionnaires?" "Questionnaires?" they said. "Surely you’re going to ask these people what they think of this, and write them again, and ask them to come back, aren’t you?"
I ask these questions all the time. They’re embarrassing, but I do. I ask City Opera "Why don’t you put on X again?" [Anthony Davis’s opera on the life of Malcolm X.]
Jay Golan, Director of Development and Planning, Carnegie Hall
We really don't look at multicultural balance per se in what we put on stage. In the same vein, we look at what people feel about Carnegie Hall, how they work for the Hall, what they bring to the Hall, when we look for volunteer involvement. I would say that the board and the volunteer committees do try to be inclusive. Our aim is to bring what we do to the community, and we do try to remain fresh and open for community input into what we do. I don't think that necessarily comes from people of one race or another.
We just had 2500 public school children listening to the American Composers Orchestra performing Berlioz and Strauss. It was the culmination of a year of artists and chamber groups in their classrooms. Every institution has to try to be responsible to work with this community in different ways. We devote six percent of our operating budget to educational work in the New York City public schools, which we do with obviously no revenue coming back. Our board members black and white support what we're doing.
Donaldson C. Pillsbury, Board Chairman. Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
It's very difficult to find good board members, period. You want people who have the time to help you, who are interested in the organization and in chamber music, and would be helpful as board members. We spend a lot of time thinking about it and recruiting good board members. For at least the last ten years, at all of our nominating committee meetings, we discuss trying to identify black board members. We've asked Betty [Allen] for suggestions and other board members, and some [of the African-Americans they've approached], sadly, are not interested in music or are too busy or for one reason or another, we haven't been able to persuade them to join our board. I would happily clone Betty.
It's an interrelated problem of musicians, audience, and board. If there were more African-Americans on the stage, there might be more in the audience, and then we might have more to talk to about joining the board. Our hope would be to broaden our audience.
Our education program is twice the size that it would have been if Betty hadn't been involved. In the backs of our minds, we hope that we've developed our future audience.
Vinson Cole, tenor
Unfortunately there are still prejudices when it comes to a black male opera singer performing. Not from your colleagues. I never experienced any problem with a colleague in my entire life. But with companies who haven't told me, but have informed my management that they couldn't hire a black singer with a [white] female partner. It hurts. You'd think that in the ‘90s we’d have come further than that. When that happens, you become discouraged a little bit, but then you look at companies that have hired you, and you think, "I'd rather work someplace that wants me as a performer."
It only happened in America with one company and in Europe in one company. We thought of doing something about it, but they'll just deny it and it will cause problems. If they don't want me, I can't make them. And if that's the reason, it's a very unpleasant situation to work where someone is forced into hiring you. One would like to break the barrier and be engaged.
I have sung with many orchestras in the south and mid-America. People come and say, "Why haven't you sung with our opera company?" And I say, "I haven't been invited."
I grew up in the Midwest and saw and performed opera as a child, but I never saw black male or female singers at the company until much later. I was lucky that I started so young, so it didn't have that much impact on me. But you have to sacrifice to be an opera singer no matter what race you are. You have to commit yourself wholeheartedly to it. It’s scary not having as many role models, to show that yes, it is possible to do this and make a living at it. You have to be better than just a regular person. You have to have that something special. At least when I was an apprentice at Santa Fe, George Shirley was singing.
We all have prejudices to some extent, but prejudice against religious and racial backgrounds is something that's taught. Once you remove the skin from a person we’re all the same.
George Shirley, tenor
Where racism really rears its head is in the realm of the tenor who sings romantic leads. It was my experience that the darker the skin color of the singer, the less likely the singer was to have a successful operatic career, especially if that singer was a tenor. Baritones, basses, who sing the villains, have an easier time. People unfortunately still think of color in a negative way.
Mervyn Wallace was a tenor with a phenomenal big rich voice. He’d been promised a role in the spring opera season in San Francisco. He was supposed to do Don Jose. But they had withdrawn the offer because he was too fat. Why would he be hit with that? My cultural paranoia tells me there's something else at work.
Thank God that Gershwin wrote Porgy and Bess because it's given so many singers opportunities to sing an opera. Some have used it to launch operatic careers. But it's the bane of black singers because a company will hire you to do Porgy and Bess, but won't hire you to do anything else. I would never encourage anyone to take a contract just to sing Porgy.
If an African-American artist speaks out about the difficulties that he has because he’s of African heritage, then problems arise that wouldn't arise if he had kept silent. Quite often young black artists are told to avoid answering if you're asked questions about these problems.
I've probably had an easier time than most, and I cannot begin to tell you why. At the first big competition I'd entered, to get a feeling for my future as an opera singer, I was pulled aside by John Gutman and by Howard Hook, the chairman of the Metropolitan Opera National Council. Both were very enthusiastic. I was buoyed by that.
I spent my first season with a wonderful little company in Woodstock, New York. I had no negative responses. They had hired black singers before. In New York city I got a church and a temple job, sang for everything that I could. I started getting little jobs here and there. I sang at the Hunter College opera workshop, and I was accepted for Tanglewood.
In the early part of ‘61 won the American Opera Auditions, which brought me a debut in Italy. I found myself moving ahead at a fairly rapid clip. One disappointment was that I had signed a contract with a manager, who had reputation for not working for a singer. [This manager, Shirley said, didn’t submit his name for a role.] I asked, "Why didn't you act?" He answered, "I was concerned." I said, "You were concerned because I'm black, and you didn't want to hurt my feelings." He thought people wouldn't want to hear me. He was the kind of fellow who didn't like to rock any boats, who didn't fight for his clients. He might have felt that a situation might get a negative response, and he'd look bad.
Once the management of opera company called, looking for a Tamino, in the Magic Flute. The artistic director said, "Let me speak to my board." And their answer was no, there's just no way. That was the only incident that I knew of where I had been refused by the management of a company. I'm not naive enough to think that that's the only one.
I sang in Santa Fe for many years. John Crosby’s hiring there was always colorblind. In the early ‘60s, companies were willing to hire me. I didn't have to go abroad to find work.
One colleague at the Met complained about my being there. But in general it’s never the members of the artistic community who expressed problems. It's members of the boards of directors. They have prejudices and they might choose to exercise those preferences.
There’s a new book, edited by Wallace Cheatham -- Dialogues on Opera and the American-American Experience. It’s published by Scarecrow Press.
Barbara Hendricks, soprano
It’s true that there are fewer black male singers than there are female. Not being a black man, I haven't had personal experience, but that's what they say. [That they’re not hired because they’re black.] Black women have been allowed to integrate across the board in a way that men haven't. We don't intimidate, nobody thinks we're going to jump them.
There are still some directors who say this isn't a role for someone who's black. But when someone doesn’t hire me, I don't look for those reasons. I really do assume that people don't hire me because they don't like what I do. That's life. I consider that as an option, that they just like something else.
There’s pressure that says this is white people's music, we shouldn't be doing it. If I sang like Aretha Franklin, I'd have a lot more money, I'd be a lot more famous. I love that voice, but it's not mine. One of the most important experiences in my life was when I participated in a program. I went into the [New York] schools. I’d never seen anything like Bed-Stuy in my life. I went in to give recitals and sing Debussy and Schubert. I’d tell the students, "If I could sing like Aretha, I would. But by some fluke of God, my voice suits Mozart. The only thing I want to share with you is my love for it." These students taught me so much about how to approach an audience. You can look at my face and tell me I shouldn’t be singing this, but my voice says I should be. I was hoping to get this message across. If you feel different, go for it. That's what life is really about. Life is about being who you are, and allowing every child to have to opportunity to go for it, not putting boundaries, not saying there's anything you can't do. Classical music is the heritage of humanity. Mozart doesn't belong to Austrians any more than Ellington belongs to Americans.
Being born a woman, being born black, being born in Arkansas, being born poor – that’s who I am. I’m from Arkansas. My parents ended up in Little Rock, but I was born in a place that if you blink your eye, you've gone in and out. So I know what real is, I know what feet in the dirt is. To go between a concert hall in Vienna and a refugee camp in the middle of Africa isn't such a big jump for me. I saw misery around me when I was growing up. The work that I do for the UN tells me that I'm not the only minority in the world. It’s part of our human nature to want to be superior. I have to fight in myself for tolerance.
I went to school in the ‘60s. My dorm mother came to me the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. She said, "What can we do for you?" I said, "Just treat me with no more or less respect than any other student in the school." If something is racial, if the taxi doesn't stop for me in New York, I know what that's about. It still happens. Where I thought we would be in 1998 is not where we are, as a country. It’s not only about minorities, but about the economy, and about class.
I came here [into a professional singing career] at a time when people had paved the way -- Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett. I didn’t have to be a credit to my race. Leontyne Price had to be that representative, had to be that ambassador.
Speight Jenkins. General Director, Seattle Opera
I believe that yes, there is racism in not hiring black males, and I don’t think it comes from the audience. I think it comes from some weird feeling about the audience. The only trouble you get into is with European directors, who bitch about people not looking right.
Vinson Cole has sung here at least one opera a year since 1988. He has done every romantic role you can possibly think of. Gordon Hawkins: I’ve used him in all the big Verdi roles. His career hasn’t gone nearly as far or as soon as it should. I have brought a lot of black males into singing. In every single opera this year there’s a black person in a major role.
That’s not because I’m trying to do affirmative action, but because these are the best singers for the part. The fact that Vinson does most of his work in Europe and Australia, and that I am so personally convinced of his high quality as compared to anyone I know, implies that there’s some reason he’s not singing.
I have never had one single solitary person raise an eyebrow much less say a word about doing it [casting black singers]. Not from the board, not from the audience, not from subscribers, and I get letters about everything. It’s true that Seattle is a weird place, it’s terminally polite. But we’ve also the audience for the Ring, which comes from all over the world and would have the possibility of having more right-wing people in it. I cast Gordon Hawkins as Donner in Das Rheingold. For the Ring I have an international audience. 54% came form out of town. Did I get one remark? Not a one.
[Have other company directors ever told him they don’t cast black men?] They don’t say anything to me, because everybody knows what I do.
What we have not had up to this point is a black Franco Corelli. As wonderful as Vinson is, he sings French rep and lighter Italian rep. We’re going to have to get us a black heldentenor or a black Franco Corelli.
The only other person who’s taken a stand is Jimmy [Levine]
Marc Skorka, President, Opera America
I am at a loss for insight on the subject matter
It’s an issue that I know comes up from time to time and is worthy of investigation. We’ve just established a singers’ services program. We’ve just begun to survey singers about the issues that matter to them. I believe that down the road we'll have insight into this.
There’s an urgent desire on the part of opera companies to hire singers of color, because in so many of our urban areas, audiences are increasingly of color. There’s a desire to have a complete and rich reflection from the stage to the audience. When the issue is discussed about building relationships with new audiences, there’s a desire to have people of that audience on that stage. How practice may differ from articulated belief, I don't know. The perception [that black men aren’t hired to sing leading roles] does stand in contrast to the articulated position.