Ebony.com: Everett Lee, the First Black Conductor on Broadway, Passes Away at 105

Everett A. Lee (1916-2022)

(Press photo)

Ebony

• By Rashad Grove
• January 21, 2022

Everett Lee, who broke down racial barriers as the first Black conductor on Broadway, passed away on Jan. 12 at a hospital in Malmo, Sweden, the New York Times reports.  He was 105.

Lee’s daughter, Eve Lee, confirmed his passing.

The Chicago Defender called him the first Black conductor “to wave the baton over a white orchestra in a Broadway production.”

Everett Astor Lee was born on Aug. 31, 1916, in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he started on the violin at age 8. Noticing his musical dexterity, Lee’s family moved to Cleveland in 1927 to expose him to the arts.

In Cleveland, he was mentored by the Orchestra’s conductor, Artur Rodzinski, and studied with concertmaster Joseph Fuchs at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Lee moved to New York in 1943 to play in the orchestra for “Carmen Jones,”  a rewrite of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” that featured an all-Black cast with a primarily white orchestra. When the conductor was snowed in, early in 1944, Lee filled in to conduct Bizet’s music. Also, he conducted George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.” 

Lee made history on Broadway when he was appointed music director of Leonard Bernstein’s “On the Town” in September 1945.

In 1953, Lee conducted the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky, after little rehearsal time. United Press reported Lee’s concert was “one of the first” at which a Black man led a white orchestra in the South.

Lee conducted the New York City Opera, another first in 1955, during the same time, his first wife, Sylvia Olden Lee, a prominent vocal coach, was appointed the first Black musician on the New York Metropolitan Opera.