INFEMNITY™ Arts and Culture News

  Yesterday I treated myself to a screening of the Oscar-nominated film The Only Girl in the Orchestra , on the life of double bassist Orin O'Brien. Orin's niece, Molly O'Brien, produced and directed the film. At 30 years old, Orin auditioned for Leonard Bernstein to join the New York Philharmonic in 1966, thus becoming the first woman to perform with the ensemble. In the film we saw several newspaper articles on her appointment. Zubin Mehta was even quoted as saying that women should not be in the orchestra. André Watts Again we have Leonard Bernstein to thank for appointing the first woman instrumentalist to a post in the New York Philharmonic. He also appointed the first African-American player, Jerome Ashby, in 1979. And of course we all know about what Bernstein did to launch the career of pianist André Watts in 1963. My question is: Where are the films that document the progress of African Americans in classical music? I produced the documentary on my father's lif...

  As we celebrate one hundred years of the Rhapsody in Blue , I am inspired to reflect on the impact of George Gershwin's composition on my life. I first discovered the Rhapsody in Blue when my father had assigned the piece to one of his graduate students at Fisk University. Carol Elligan was a former Fisk Jubilee Singer and Piano Pedagogy major. I already considered her to be my best friend (even though I was eleven years old at the time, and Carol was in her early twenties). Before she started working on the Rhapsody in Blue , I was struggling with my piano studies, and had even reached the point where I was ready to quit piano. My parents went on about how expensive my piano lessons were, so I figured they'd be pleased with saving that little bit of money. But my quitting was not an option. They insisted that I continue with the lessons, whether I liked it or not. Enid Katahn, my piano teacher at the Blair School of Music in Nashville was struggling to assign repertoire tha...

The provocative title of my last blog ( Bradley Cooper's " Maestro" : Ho-Hum! Another Movie About White People )   brought lots of comments, re-posts, and controversy. Interestingly, all positive comments came from black people (American and otherwise), and several whites as well. All negative comments came from whites. It was shocking to me how blissfully unaware some of the non-melanated people are when it comes to the history of racism in Hollywood. They have no idea of the degree to which African Americans have been discriminated against, excluded, relegated to servant status, or portrayed as criminals. When a film about Leonard Bernstein completely ignored his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement, I could not keep silent. Here are some of the comments: Mark Bailey: "Brilliant review -- I agree with every word. Thanks for posting it. I was deeply bothered by the homophobia and gay-shaming in the film, especially by Felicia. The lack of inclusivity is yet an...

  Granted, most Hollywood films about American celebrities of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s are going to be about white people. But in a film about Leonard Bernstein, there were several opportunities to tell the story about Lenny marching with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama, or Lenny introducing young André  Watts to the world concert stage, or even Lenny conducting Marian Anderson with the Israel Philharmonic. But no. The producers of Maestro chose to ignore the existence of African Americans, except when Bernstein's wife, Felicia (portrayed by Carey Mulligan), needed a nurse more than an hour and forty-five minutes into the film. At the very end, Bernstein directs his drunken, romantic attention toward a young black male conducting student, whom he had just instructed in a conducting master class. I suppose this young conducting student represented the future of classical music. But for a people who had been so discriminated against after the Second World War that young Ber...

Frances Taylor at the Miles Davis exhibit Frances Taylor While watching the PBS documentary on the life of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis ( Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool ), I was very interested in the interview with dancer Frances Taylor, to whom Davis was married from 1959 to 1968. After doing some research, I learned that Frances Taylor was the first African-American ballerina to perform with the Paris Opera Ballet. She was a member of the Katherine Dunham Company, had roles in the Broadway musicals Mr. Wonderful , Shinbone Alley , and was an original cast member of West Side Story . Taylor also appeared in the Off-Broadway productions of Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess .  While working on Broadway, she was credited as Elizabeth Taylor because there was already an actress named Frances Taylor, so she used her middle name. Frances Taylor and Leonard Bernstein Frances Taylor was a  member of the original cast of  West Side Story , working alongside Leonard Bernstein, Jerom...

In the wake of all of the disgusting allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against so many powerful men in the entertainment and music industries (to say nothing of our representatives in Congress and so-called president), I feel compelled to say something about how these revelations have affected my life. Granted I have been a musician for all of my life, and there were the occasional college professors who thought that they could pressure me to come to their homes to "discuss" my grade. Then there was the total stranger who followed me on the street in Philadelphia, and decided to follow me into the vestibule of an apartment house and feel me up (until I thought to scream). And then there was the man in Prague who gave me the wrong directions so that I ended up in an isolated wooded area, where he followed me and put his hands on me (until I fought him off).