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He was known as the first black conductor on Broadway and the first to conduct a white orchestra in the South. Lee has pursued an outstanding career in Europe.
by David Allen
Everett Lee, a conductor who broke down racial barriers but then fled the prejudices faced by black classical musicians in the United States to make a meaningful career in Europe, died Jan. 12 in a hospital near his home in Malmö, Sweden. He 105 years.
His daughter, Eve, showed death.
Already as violin soloist at the head of white theater orchestras in 1943, M. Lee made a significant breakthrough on Broadway when he appointed him musical director of Leonard Bernstein’s “On the Town” in September 1945. The Chicago Defender called him the first black conductor “to wave the baton over a white orchestra in a Broadway production.
In 1953, Mr. Lee conducted the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky, an attractive afternoon for him due to the lack of sufficient practice session time and the tension of the story. United Press reported that Mr. Lee’s concert was “one of the first” in which a black man conducted a white orchestra in the South; other media went further and claimed it was the first. The Louisville Courier-Journal critic said Mr. Lee had “made a very favorable first impression. “
Then, in 1955, shortly after Marian Anderson made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, M. Lee directed the New York City Opera, another first (his first wife, Sylvia Olden Lee, a vocal coach, had been named the first black). musician at the Met at the time. )
“Not only was his direction expert in all its technical aspects,” wrote a New York Times critic of his “La Traviata,” “but he reported through musicality and an exceptionally keen understanding of the opera’s character. “
Despite those advances, racism has limited Mr. M’s American career. Lee, but refused to let him sketch out his work. “A black, status in front of a white symphonic band?Artistic director Arthur Judson asked him in the past. due to the 1940s, refusing to sign it, according to Sylvia Olden Lee. “Non. Sorry. “
Mr. Judson advised Mr. Lee to join other black musicians and go into exile abroad. Lee did not leave at first, but nevertheless did so in 1957 and prospered in Germany, Colombia and especially in Sweden, where he succeeded Herbert Blomstedt as music director of the Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra from 1962 to 1972.
Mr. Lee said he wanted to return to the United States, but would only do so to become music director of a large orchestra.
“I didn’t have much hope at home, despite some successes,” he told The Atlanta Constitution in 1970, explaining that racism was something minor in his life and in his paintings in Europe. “It would be great to paint from home. I’m American, why not?
Only one leading ensemble, the Oregon Symphony, has given something like this to a black conductor: James DePreist.
Everett Astor Lee was born on August 31, 1916 in Wheeling, W. Va. , the first child of Everett Denver Lee, a hairdresser, and Mamie Amanda (Blue) Lee, a housewife. He began playing with the violin at the age of 8 and his skill caused the circle of relatives to move to Cleveland in 1927.
Mr. Lee conducted athletics in college, Jesse Owens, Olympic gold medalist a few years, and conducted the Glenville High School Orchestra as concertmaster. he worked as an elevator operator. He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music with the concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, Joseph Fuchs.
After graduating in 1941, Mr. Lee enlisted in the army and trained as an aviator in Tuskegee, Alabama, but was wounded and released.
He moved to New York in 1943 to play in the orchestra of “Carmen Jones,” a rewrite of Oscar Hammerstein II’s “Carmen” through Georges Bizet that had an all-black cast but a predominantly white orchestra. When the director fell the snow in Early 1944, M. Lee left the first violin chair to conduct Bizet’s music. Spells followed at the helm of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” before Bernstein hired him as concertmaster and later musical director of “On the Town. “
“At a time of Jim Crow segregation in performance,” wrote musicologist Carol J. Oja, “Lee’s appointment is frankly remarkable. “
Lee then played in the violin segment of the New York Symphony Orchestra for Bernstein, who awarded a scholarship to Tanglewood in 1946. Mr. Lee studied acting with Serge Koussevitzky of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conducted the Boston Pops in 1949.
“Like most young people,” he told the New York Amsterdam News in 1977, “I think I will faint and the world. “
But there was a line of color that I couldn’t cross. Rodzinski, now conductor of the New York Philharmonic, refused to allow Mr. Lee to audition for the violin segment of the orchestra, knowing the inevitable result. Hammerstein thought of him for a trip. However, the production told him that “if a boy of color is the driver and we went south,” it would cause quite a stir and reservations would be canceled.
Mr. Lee responded by creating in 1947 the Little Cosmopolitan Symphony, an incorporated ensemble he rehearsed at Grace Congregational Church in Harlem. He made his city centre debut with him on the City Hall podium in May 1948, with an invoice that included the premiere. of “Brief Elegy” through Ulysses Kay, one of the many black composers that Mr. Lee has programmed in his career.
In 1952, the Cosmopolitan gave a concert of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” in front of 2100 other people at City College, with Regina Resnik of the Met as Leonora.
“My own organization is making smart progress,” Mr. Lee Bernstein wrote, suggesting that “this may just be the beginning of breaking down many unhealthy barriers. “But starting any set was tricky then, let alone a built-in set. Recruitment had been complicated because trained black musicians now believed that “there was no ‘future’ in achieving the highest standards of skill,” Lee wrote in The Times in December 1948.
Despite signing with the New York City Opera in 1955, he went to Europe. In 1957 he moved to Munich, where he founded an orchestra at the Amerika Haus and conducted a touring opera company. Guest venues arrived quickly; he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in June 1960, one of many European dates.
Like Dean Dixon, a black conductor who conducted the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra from 1953 to 1960, M. Lee discovered a safe haven in Suède. Il maintained an ambitious repertoire in Norrkoping: operas in performance from “Aida” to “Porgy”, achieving gigantic amounts of Swedish music, with Hans Eklund’s “Music for Orchestra” as a favorite, and participating with jazz musicians led by saxophonist Arne Domnerus. It was a balance between the new and the old, the local and the other, which M. Lee rehearsed as conductor of the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985 to 1987.
Even so, he completely abandoned American orchestras and began to make appearances again. “The inescapable conclusion is that it will be there more often,” wrote times critic Theodore Strongin in 1966. the New World, a New York ensemble founded in 1965. After an arrangement with the Philadelphia Ebony Opera, he made one last salute, with the Louisville Orchestra, in 2005.
Although black directors such as M. DePreist, Paul Freeman, and Henry Lewis stood out more in the 1970s, M. Lee has noticed few genuine improvements.
“There hasn’t been a major replacement in my field,” he told The Afro-American Newspaper in 1972. “Orchestra corporations feel that if they had a black conductor last year, they don’t want one this year. “
He fulfilled the dream of achieving the New York Philharmonic on the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1976, achieving a program through Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jean Sibelius and David Baker’s “Kosbro, short for “Keep on Steppin’, brothers”.
Mr. Lee’s first marriage ended in divorce. He married Christin Andersson in 1979. She and Eve Lee, his daughter from his first marriage, he, as well as a son of the second, Erik Lee; two granddaughters; and a great-granddaughter.
Despite the stumbles he faced, Lee said in a 1997 interview that he was not “bitter. “
He remembers being denied violin auditions in two primary American orchestras.
“Then I thought if I couldn’t sign for you, I would guide you,” he said. “I kept that promise to myself.
“These two orchestras that even denied me an audition, I directed them. I just had to do it. I just had to show them that I was there.
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