Category: Lawrence Brownlee

  • Classically Black: #TakeTwoKnees

    TW/CW: disturbing imagery of Transatlantic slave trade and police brutality. After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, Anthony McGill, the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic (and the only African-American principal in that illustrious orchestra), recorded himself in his living room playing a mournful, mixed-tonality version of “America the Beautiful,” and posted […]

  • Classically Black: Against the Grain

    In 2018, the city of Austin, Texas was terrorized by a bomber who, over the course of two weeks in March, murdered two people, and injured several more, with homemade bombs sent through the mail to residents of communities of color. One of the dead was a 17-year-old classical musician, Draylen Mason, the only black […]

  • Sounding “White”

    Throughout 2018, the New York Times has been running a series of stories called “Overlooked,” which are the obituaries of notable women from the past who the paper declined to acknowledge at the time of their deaths. In August, the Times published an overdue obituary for Sissieretta Jones, the first black opera singer to appear at Carnegie […]