Booker Rowe
Sergio A. Mims forwards this story:
"Been first all my life and the only all my life, really. There were very few of us."
Tamala Edwards
September 24, 2020
You may be noticing a rash of retirements recently as people rethink their priorities in the midst of the pandemic.
In
this week's Art of Aging, Tamala Edwards meets a trailblazing musician
from Germantown taking his final bow after a half-century with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Booker Rowe started playing the violin just before his 12th birthday.
"I
bugged my parents for two years for a violin and my parents finally
bought me a $35 violin," says Rowe. "I'd play it anywhere."
He credits a West Philadelphia High School teacher for instilling lessons on music theory and harmony.
"He brought out the symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms and we had to sight-read them," says Rowe.
Rowe got his first professional job in Nashville, Tennessee, and with it an upgrade on his violin.
"This
is the instrument that I bought in 1963 when I went to play with the
Nashville Symphony String Quartet," explains Rowe. "It was a Gagliano."
And he made history with it.
"I made the string quartet the first integrated string quartet in the south," says Rowe.
It
was the first in a string of firsts for Rowe, who in 1968 was hired as a
sub for the Philadelphia Orchestra; becoming the first Black musician
to play with the Fabulous Philadelphians.
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