Dean Dixon
(SMNR Frankfurt)
(SMNR Frankfurt)
Dean Dixon: Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad
Rufus Jones, Jr.
(Published by Rowman & Littlefield on June 16, 2015)
Bob Shingleton writes:
Bill,
Hope you are well. Rufus Jones' forthcoming biography of Dean Dixon receives a heads up On An Overgrown Path - http://goo.gl/ucPi7W
Regards,
Bob
On An Overgrown Path
Thursday, April 09, 2015
Negro at home, maestro abroad
Dean Dixon, who is seen above, has featured in no less than sixteen Overgrown Path posts. By one of those auspicious coincidences that power this blog, just before I uploaded the most recent post - which recounts how he gave the the premiere of Richard Arnell's suite The Land
with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1942 - news arrived of a forthcoming
biography* of the West Indian American conductor. Its author is Dr. Rufus Jones, who has edited The Collected Folk Suites of William Grant Still and is director of orchestral and choral studies at Westglades Middle School
in Fort Lauderdale. While studying music education in Austin, Texas,
Rufus Jones became aware that discrimination was still endemic in
classical music. This disturbing revelation made the young African
American realise that, to quote him, "I needed to know more about my
history and more about how others in my profession coped with the
sobering reality of racial discrimination". So writing a biography of
Dean Dixon became Rufus Jones' way of confronting racism in his chosen
profession.
Dean Dixon: Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad
is a sobering story of racism, abandonment, self-imposed exile, health
problems, spiritual searching, and financial difficulties. But it is
also the story of towering achievement. It tells how Dixon returned to
conduct the New York Philharmonic in 1970. He had been shunned by the
American classical music establishment and this was his first concert in
the U.S. for twenty-one years. His conducting moved the Newsweek critic to write:
This was a ripe Dixon, authoritative and precise. He is not a showboat conductor, yet he showered his program with lilting lyricism and controlled grace. And he gave Brahms’s Second Symphony a rich romantic sweep that brought the great throng to its feet in a standing, especially thrilling ovation.
But,
despite this triumph, the story ends with a diminuendo, with Dr. Jones
recounting how the American Dream of the West Indian American from
Harlem finally came true - abroad.
With his health broken by the long struggle against discrimination, Dean
Dixon died in Switzerland aged just 61 in 1976. But this new biography
is much more than an important retelling of history. Speaking at
Carnegie Hall in October 2013, Aaron Dworkin founder and president of the Sphinx Organization - a charity promoting diversity in the arts - accused orchestras of failing to diversify. In his speech
he pointed out that just four percent of orchestra players in the U.S.
are Black and Latino; by comparison the Black and Latino ethnic groups
comprise twenty-nine percent of the U.S. population. Aaron Dworkin was
especially critical of the New York Philharmonic, highlighting that, at
the time, the orchestra had not had a Black member in five years. (The
first small step to rectify this imbalance was taken, coincidentally or
otherwise, in the following year when clarinettist Anthony McGill
became the orchestra's first African-American principal). It is yet
another overlooked irony of classical music that so much attention is
paid to the deplorable gender imbalance in the Vienna Philharmonic, but
so little attention is paid to the equally deplorable but less click
baitable ethnic imbalance in virtually every major orchestra. Let us
hope that Rufus Jones' timely biography of Dean Dixon helps to draw
attention to that imbalance.
Comment by email:
Hi, Bill. Thank you so much for putting me
in contact with Bob! He has been an incredible support. Through his
blog, I was introduced to Alex Ross, music critic with the New Yorker.
He has agreed to read my book!!!
And Sergio Mims has booked me for an interview on his radio show on April 29!!! I owe you a great deal for putting all of this in motion. I must also thank you for putting Bob's review of my book on your blog. Thanks, Rufus [Rufus Jones, Jr.]
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