Sergio A. Mims: 6abc.com: Trailblazing musician Booker Rowe takes final bow after 50 years with Philadelphia Orchestra

Booker Rowe

Sergio A. Mims forwards this story:

6abc.com

"Been first all my life and the only all my life, really. There were very few of us."

Tamala Edwards

September 24, 2020

After a half-century with the Philadelphia Orchestra, violinist Booker Rowe is retiring.

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.