Dean Dixon was born in Harlem in 1915. His mother purchased his first violin when he was 3 ½, and he began having three violin lessons each week. He slowly worked up to practicing five hours a day. Dixon’s father did not contribute to the family’s income, so at age 13, Dean created the Dean Dixon School of Music, giving private piano and violin lessons in his room. Having learned to play all the instruments of the orchestra, he eventually taught violin, cello, viola, piano, singing, and composition. On Saturdays and Sundays, he taught from 7 am to 11:30 pm. He played in the first violin section of his high school orchestra and with a number of community orchestras.
The thought of accepting a black conductor who could assert musical authority over white male men was offensive to many, and opposed at every turn. At 17, he founded the Dean Dixon Symphony Orchestra and Chorus Society and Dixon entered the Institute of Musical Arts, later known as the Juilliard School, and paying the tuition from his earnings as a music teacher. He also began presenting popular music lectures around New York on topics such as Expectant Mothers and Music or Music and Its Relation to Digestion. And he found innovative ways to educate and inspire children of all ages about the joys of classical music.
He completed the graduate conducting program at Juilliard on a full tuition scholarship and fellowship, while simultaneously earning a master’s degree in music education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
At 23, he made his conducting debut at New York’s Town Hall, and the following year, founded the New York Chamber Orchestra – after which he began his doctoral studies at Columbia University.
In 1941, 1st Lady Eleanor Roosevelt attended a concert of the Dean Dixon Symphony Orchestra, and wrote about her favorable impressions in her nationally syndicated column. A month later, the 26-year-old Dixon was invited to conduct two live broadcast performances with Toscanini’s NBC Symphony. They were so successful, that he was quickly engaged to conduct the orchestra the following year, and immediately became the first African–American to conduct the New York Philharmonic. After the performance, when Dixon gestured to the orchestra to stand and acknowledge the applause, the musicians refused, and instead joined in with the audience to applaud Dixon. When he conducted the New York Chamber Orchestra again in Town Hall, Mrs. Roosevelt spoke to the audience about how music is ever so important given the current international crisis. “I think that in times like these in a troubled world, music is a universal language that all of us need.” It was the beginning of W.W. II. She also praised the performance in her syndicated column and wrote: “The arts are the one avenue not blocked by the hate which comes with war. I think we should give every art expression our support whenever we possibly can.”
Dixon was unable to serve during W.W. II because of severe asthma. Therefore, he brought his Harlem orchestra and chorus to perform at veterans hospitals, schools, and civic centers.
In 1944, Dixon established the American Youth Orchestra to make concerts affordable and accessible. The orchestra performed at hospitals, army camps and rehabilitation centers because he wanted to let those who fought, sacrificed, and became incapacitated know that they had not been forgotten.
From 1947-1953, Dixon was married to the American pianist Vivian Rifkin, with whom he did a good deal of performing and recording. Their daughter Diane was born in 1948.
He conducted most of the major orchestras in Europe, Africa, Israel and South America. At age 26, was the first Black American to lead the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony. Despite further successes with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and as the 1st Black conductor to conduct the Boston Symphony, these triumphs did not lead to an appointment with a major American orchestra because of the color of his skin. Despite his talent, education, expertise, entrepreneurial efforts and unanimous successes, Dixon couldn’t even secure professional career management in the United States. Dixon became increasingly disillusioned, and in 1949 left the United States for Israel and Europe, where his schedule was filled with prestigious guest conducting appearances and led to permanent appointments with the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden, the Radio Symphony in Frankfurt, Germany and the Sydney Symphony in Australia. When 87 year-old Jean Sibelius heard Dixon conduct his own 5th Symphony with the Helsinski Stadorkester on the radio, Sibelius said: “This is a man I want to see. He has understood what I meant.” And so Dixon visited Sibelius in his home, where the composer praised the performance. They met again the following year when Sibelius invited Dixon to Helsinki to conduct his music.
Hurt beyond words from what he characterized as the cruelest form of abandonment, he did not return to the United States for 21 years, until he received another invitation to conduct the New York Philharmonic in 1970, some 29 years after his debut with the orchestra.
From 1954-1973, Dixon was married to his 2nd wife, Mary Mandelin, a Finnish countess and playwright, who gave birth to their daughter Nina. They moved to Sweden where Dixon was the principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony from 1953-1960.
Dixon was fluent in English, German, Swedish and Italian. In 1959, he was offered 3 permanent positions in Germany: the radio orchestras in Hanover, Munich, and Frankfurt. Dixon chose Frankfurt, where he was its principal conductor until 1974.
In 1964-1967, he was also the music director of the Sydney Symphony in Australia.
Finally in 1970, he returned to the United States to conduct several performances with the New York Philharmonic and was presented with the key to the city by mayor John Lindsay. He also conducted the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the orchestras in St. Louis, Pittsburg, Kansas City, Minnesota, Milwaukee, Detroit, the District of Columbia, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. His return to the United States – after more than two decades – represented a need to be accepted by a country that had abandoned him so many years before.
The tragedy is that when Dixon finally became greatly sought after in the United States, his European manager refused to free up time on Dixon’s calendar to accept invitations to conduct American orchestras. This was because the European manager only made money from Dixon’s European engagements.
In 1973– Dixon married his 3rd wife, Ritha.
He made many recordings with the Prague Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, and in Vienna with the Volksoper Orchestra. He was honored by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and received the Ditson Conductor’s Award, and the Medal of Distinguished Service from Columbia University’s Teachers College.
Dean Dixon suffered from cardiovascular disease and died from a stroke in 1976 in Switzerland. He was only 61.
Michelle Cann, made her orchestral debut at age fourteen, and has since performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including those of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati and New Jersey. Ms. Cann studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute. She appears frequently in solo and chamber recitals throughout the U.S., China and South Korea, and has appeared as cohost and collaborative pianist on National Public Radio. An award winner at top international competitions, in 2019, Ms.Cann served as the Cincinnati Symphony’s Multicultural Awareness Council Music Innovator in recognition of her role as an African–American classical musician who embodies artistry, innovation, and a commitment to education and community engagement. She is the recipient of the 2022 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. Embracing her dual role as both performer and pedagogue, her responsibilities include teaching residencies at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and the National Conference of the Music Teachers National Association. As a faculty member of the Curtis Institute of Music, she holds the Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies. A champion of the music of Florence Price, a great, but neglected African–American composer of the 20th century, Michelle Caan performed the New York City premiere of the composer’s One Movement Piano Concerto in 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere in 2021. Here is Michelle Cann playing parts of Florence Price’s Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Randall Goosby was born in 1996. He began studying violin at age 7, and made his debut with the Jacksonville Symphony at age 9. At 13, Randall made his debut with the New York Philharmonic and was the youngest ever to win the Sphinx Concerto Competition. He spent the summers during his teenage years studying at the Perlman Music Program, the Verbier Festival, and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, his family flew him to New York each week to attend Juilliard’s pre-college program on a full scholarship, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and artist diploma degrees. He is a protégé of Itzhak Perlman, who, on several occasions, invited Randall to join him in performances of Bach’s Concerto for 2 Violins, including with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. Randall is the winner of the 2018 Young Concert Artists Competition, and is the recipient of Sphinx’s Isaac Stern Award, the Avery Fisher Career Grant, and of a career advancement grant from the Bagby Foundation. Here is some of the spiritual, Deep River, based on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s transcription, in a version by Maud Powell. The pianist is Zhu Wang.
He has performed as soloist with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Cleveland, the Royal Scottish National, the London Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Dallas, San Francisco, Antwerp, Nashville, the New World, and the Philharmonia in London. He records for Decca, and can be heard on the soundtrack of the film Chevalier, the movie about the 18th century black violinist and composer Chevalier de Saint-George. Goosby is deeply passionate about serving others through education, social engagement and outreach activities. He has performed at schools, hospitals and assisted living facilities across the U.S. Randall Goosby is determined to make music more inclusive and accessible, and to bring the music of neglected composers to light.
He plays a Stradivarius violin on loan from the Samsung Foundation of Culture of Korea made in 1708.
Hazel Scott was born in Trinidad in 1920. At age 4, Scott moved to Harlem with her mother, who was a classically trained pianist and music teacher. As an 8 year old child prodigy, she received a scholarship to study at the Juilliard School. In her teens, she performed with the Count Basie orchestra and on the radio, and she was a prominent Jazz singer throughout the 1930s and 40s. By 1945, Scott was earning today’s equivalent of 1.1 million dollars a year. In 1950, she became the first African-American to host her own TV show, The Hazel Scott Show. In 1958, Scott voluntarily appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
She expressed frustration with the false accusations of entertainers. Her television program was canceled a week later, and less than a year after that, Scott suffered a nervous breakdown. Therefore, Scott moved to Paris, and performed in Europe for 10 years. She was one of the first Afro Caribbean women to be cast in respectable roles in major Hollywood movies. Scott also refused to perform in segregated venues. In 1981, Hazel Scott died of cancer in Manhattan at the age of 61. She used her status and influence to improve the representation of African-Americans in film and to fight against racial injustice. Singer–songwriter Alicia Keys looks up to Scott as her inspiration. In the 1943 Mae West movie, The Heat’s On, Hazel Scott demonstrated her technical virtuosity by playing one of her famous compositions, “Black & White Are Beautiful” on two pianos simultaneously.
Philippa Schuyler was born in Harlem in 1931. She was the only child of a prominent black journalist and a white Texan heiress. Schuyler knew the alphabet at 19 months, and was able to read and write at the age of two. At four, she was playing the music of Mozart and Schumann and began to compose. Schuyler won her first gold medal at age 4 from the National Guild of Piano Teachers.
Her IQ at the age of six was 185. Schuyler won eight consecutive prizes from the New York Philharmonic, and won gold medals from the music education league and from the city of New York. Schuyler’s radio concerts attracted significant press coverage and the admiration of New York’s mayor Fiorello LaGuardia who declared June 19, 1940 Philippa Duke Schuyler Day at the New York World’s Fair, where she performed two concerts. By the age of 14, she had composed 200 compositions, and was touring constantly in the United States and overseas. At 15, she graduated from high school and performed with the New York Philharmonic at Lewisohn Stadium, and then continued her studies at Manhattanville College. She became a role model for many children in the United States.
In later life, Schuyler grew disillusioned with the racial and gender prejudice she encountered in the United States, and chose a voluntary exile of performing in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and Europe. She played at the inauguration of three successive presidents of Haiti and in Africa performed for several heads of state. As a writer, 5 of her non-fiction books were published, as well as more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles internationally. She spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Although Schuyler engaged a number of affairs, she never married. In 1966, she traveled to Vietnam to perform for the troops and various Vietnamese groups. She returned to Vietnam in 1967 as a war correspondent, and served as a missionary when she was killed in an army helicopter crash during a mission to evacuate Vietnamese orphans. 2,000 mourners attended her funeral at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Schuyler’s mother was profoundly affected by her death, and committed suicide a few days before the second anniversary of her daughter’s death.
André Watts was born in 1946 in Nuremberg, in then Allied-occupied Germany, to an American army officer and a Hungarian mother. He began studying the violin when he was 4, but decided he preferred the piano when he was 6. He made his debut as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 9. Watts studied at the Philadelphia Musical Academy and at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, where he studied with Leon Fleisher. He made his New York Philharmonic debut in Carnegie Hall at age 16, and immediately began recording for Columbia Records! That year, he made his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the following season with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D. C., and at 19, made his European debut with the London Symphony.
He taught at Indiana University, was elected to the American Philosophical Society, was a Grammy Award winner, and received honorary doctorate degrees from Albright College, Yale University, and honors from the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University, the Juilliard School and the Peabody Conservatory of John Hopkins University. He also received the Avery Fisher-Price, the American Classical Music Hall of Fame Honor, the American Liszt Society Medal, the Order of Zaire, the University of the Arts Medal from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, the National Medal of Arts, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Watts was married to Joan Brand, and had 2 step–children, and 7 step-grandchildren. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2016, from which he died seven years later at age 77. André Watts was one of the greatest piano virtuosos of the 20th century. During the six decades of his career, he performed with every major American orchestra and most of the world’s major orchestras. He soon became so widely sought after that his performances were booked three years in advance, giving 150 performances per year, many of which were televised from Lincoln Center.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason was born in 1999, and grew up in Nottingham, England. He began cello lessons at age 6, and at 8, won the Marguerite Swan Memorial Prize. At 9, he was awarded a scholarship to the Junior Academy of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and later completed his undergraduate studies at the Royal Academy. He later donated 3,000 pounds to his former secondary school, which enabled 10 students to continue their cello lessons.
At age 17, he became the first Black musician to win the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, which prompted his hometown of Nottingham to name a bus in his honor.
In 2018, he was asked to perform at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle, which was televised throughout the globe. He won the Southbank Sky Arts Award, the Male Artist of the Year and the Critic’s Choice Award at the Classic BRIT Awards, the Best Classical Artist at the Global Awards, and was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to music. The Royal Academy of Music appointed him as its first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring, and the Cincinnati Symphony appointed him as innovator with its multi– cultural awareness council. He records exclusively for Decca Classics, and his recordings have quickly gone to the top of the charts.
Sheku was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 12, and was appointed as a global ambassador of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He is also an ambassador for the Music Masters and Future Talent Charities. He plays on a Matteo Goffriller cello made in 1700.
All of Sheku’s six siblings play classical music!