Everett Lee, a conductor who broke down racial obstacles however then fled the unfairness that Black classical musicians confronted in america to make a big profession in Europe, died on Jan. 12 at a hospital close to his residence in Malmo, Sweden. He was 105.
Mr. Lee’s daughter, Eve, confirmed the demise.
Already a concertmaster main white theater orchestras by 1943, Mr. Lee made a big breakthrough on Broadway when he was appointed music director of Leonard Bernstein’s “On the City” in September 1945. The Chicago Defender known as him the primary Black conductor “to wave the baton over a white orchestra in a Broadway manufacturing.”
In 1953, Mr. Lee performed the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky, a nerve-shredding afternoon for him due to little rehearsal time and the stress of historical past. United Press reported that Mr. Lee’s live performance was “one of many first” at which a Black man led a white orchestra within the South; different shops went additional, claiming that it was the very first such time. The Courier-Journal critic stated that he “made a most favorable first impression.”
Then, in 1955, shortly after Marian Anderson had made her debut on the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Lee performed the New York Metropolis Opera, one other first. (His spouse, Sylvia Olden Lee, a vocal coach, had been appointed the primary Black musician on the Met’s workers round that point.)
“Not solely was his conducting knowledgeable in all its technical features,” a New York Occasions critic wrote of his “La Traviata,” “but it surely was knowledgeable with musicianship and an exceptionally eager grasp of the character of the opera.”
Regardless of the breakthroughs, racism constrained Mr. Lee’s U.S. profession, although he refused to let it outline his work. “A Negro, standing in entrance of a white symphony group?” the artist supervisor Arthur Judson requested him, in keeping with Ms. Lee, within the late Forties, declining to signal him up. “No. I’m sorry.”
Judson advised that Mr. Lee comply with different Black musicians into exile overseas. Mr. Lee didn’t go away at first, however finally did so in 1957 and prospered in Germany, Colombia and particularly Sweden, the place he succeeded Herbert Blomstedt as music director of the Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra, from 1962 to 1972.
Mr. Lee incessantly stated that he longed to return to america however would solely achieve this to change into the music director of a serious orchestra.
“I didn’t have very a lot hope at residence, regardless of some success,” he informed The Atlanta Structure in 1970, saying that racism was much less of a consider his life and work in Europe. “It will be good to work from home. I’m an American — why not?” If he might make it in Europe, he concluded, “I ought to be capable of make it right here.”
Just one prime ensemble, the Oregon Symphony, has ever given such a put up to a Black conductor: James DePreist.
Everett Astor Lee was born on Aug. 31, 1916, in Wheeling, W.Va., the primary son of Everett Denver Lee, a barber, and Mamie Amanda (Blue) Lee, a homemaker. He began the violin at age 8, and his expertise prompted the household to maneuver to Cleveland in 1927.
Mr. Lee ran monitor in junior excessive, a couple of years behind the Olympian gold medalist Jesse Owens, and led the Glenville Excessive Faculty orchestra as concertmaster. He got here underneath the mentorship of the Cleveland Orchestra’s conductor, Artur Rodzinski, after an opportunity assembly on the resort the place Mr. Lee labored as an elevator operator. He studied on the Cleveland Institute of Music with the Cleveland Orchestra’s concertmaster, Joseph Fuchs.
Graduating in 1941, Mr. Lee enlisted within the Military and skilled to change into a Tuskegee airman in Alabama, however he injured himself and was launched.
Mr. Lee moved to New York in 1943 to play within the orchestra for “Carmen Jones,” an Oscar Hammerstein II rewrite of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” that had an all-Black solid however a primarily white orchestra. When the conductor was snowed in, early in 1944, Mr. Lee stepped from the concertmaster’s chair to conduct Bizet’s music. Spells conducting George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” adopted, earlier than Bernstein employed him as concertmaster and later music director of “On the City.”
“In an period of Jim Crow segregation in efficiency,” the musicologist Carol J. Oja has written, “Lee’s appointment was downright outstanding.”
Mr. Lee then performed within the violin part of the New York Metropolis Symphony for Bernstein, who organized a scholarship to Tanglewood in 1946, the place Mr. Lee studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky of the Boston Symphony; he performed the Boston Pops in 1949.
“Like most younger folks,” Mr. Lee informed New York Amsterdam Information in 1977, “I believed I might exit and conquer the world.”
However there was a coloration line Mr. Lee couldn’t cross. Rodzinski, now conductor of the New York Philharmonic, refused to let him audition for its violin part, understanding the inevitable outcome. Hammerstein thought-about him for a touring manufacturing however informed him that “if a coloured boy is the conductor, and we go into the South,” it will trigger an uproar and trigger bookings to be canceled.
Mr. Lee responded by creating the Cosmopolitan Little Symphony in 1947, an built-in ensemble that rehearsed at Harlem’s Grace Congregational Church. It made its downtown debut with him on the rostrum at City Corridor in Might 1948, with a invoice that included the premiere of “Temporary Elegy” by Ulysses Kay, considered one of many Black composers Mr. Lee programmed throughout his profession.
By 1952, the Cosmopolitan was giving a live performance efficiency of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” earlier than 2,100 folks at Metropolis Faculty, with the Met’s Regina Resnik as Leonora.
“My very own group is coming alongside pretty properly,” Mr. Lee wrote Bernstein, suggesting “it might be the start of breaking down plenty of silly obstacles.” However beginning any ensemble was onerous then, not to mention an built-in one. Recruitment had been troublesome as a result of skilled Black musicians now believed “that there was ‘no future’ in reaching excessive requirements of proficiency,” Mr. Lee wrote in The Occasions in December 1948.
Regardless of signing with the New York Metropolis Opera workers in 1955, Mr. Lee left for Europe. He moved to Munich in 1957, founding an orchestra on the Amerika Haus and main a touring opera firm. Visitor spots got here rapidly; he led the Berlin Philharmonic in June 1960, considered one of many European dates.
Like Dean Dixon, a Black conductor who led the Gothenburg Symphony from 1953 to 1960, Mr. Lee discovered sanctuary in Sweden. He maintained an formidable repertoire in Norrkoping, performing operas from “Aida” to “Porgy,” conducting huge portions of Swedish music, with Hans Eklund’s “Music for Orchestra” a favourite, and infrequently collaborating with jazz gamers led by the saxophonist Arne Domnerus. It was a steadiness of recent and outdated, native and in any other case, that Mr. Lee repeated as chief conductor of the Bogotá Philharmonic from 1985 to 1987.
Even so, Mr. Lee by no means fairly gave up on U.S. orchestras. He began to make visitor appearances once more. “The inescapable conclusion is, he must be round extra typically,” a Occasions critic wrote in 1966. In 1973, he took command of the Symphony of the New World, a New York ensemble that had been based in 1965 as an built-in orchestra, like his now defunct Cosmopolitan. After an affiliation with the Philadelphia-based Opera Ebony, he took a final bow, with the Louisville Orchestra, in 2005.
“There was no main change in my subject,” he informed The Afro-American Newspaper in 1972. “Orchestra firms really feel if that they had a Black orchestra chief final yr, they don’t want one this yr.”
Mr. Lee fulfilled a dream of conducting the New York Philharmonic on the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1976, main Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jean Sibelius and David Baker’s “Kosbro” — quick for “Carry on Steppin’ Brothers.”
Mr. Lee’s marriage to Ms. Lee led to divorce. He married Christin Andersson in 1979. She survives him, as does Eve Lee, his daughter from his first marriage; a son from his second, Erik Lee; two granddaughters; and one great-granddaughter.
Regardless of the obstacles that Mr. Lee confronted, he stated in an interview printed in 1997 that he was not “bitter.”
He recalled being denied violin auditions at two main U.S. orchestras.
“I then made up my thoughts that if I can’t be a part of you, then I’ll lead you. I did make good on that promise to myself. These two orchestras that denied me even an audition, I’ve performed,” he stated. “I simply needed to. I simply needed to present them that I used to be there.”