Born To Be a Musician
Henry Lewis was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1932. His father was an automobile salesman, and his mother was a registered nurse. He was just five years old when his mother placed him at a piano for the first time, a moment that would change his life forever. For the next six decades, music would be the driving force of his life. Throughout his childhood, Lewis played in school orchestras, learning several instruments and making no secret of his desire to become a professional musician one day. His father, however, like most pragmatic parents, wanted his son to be, as Lewis described it, “what he called ‘a respectable professional man,’ not a musician.” Nevertheless, Maestro Lewis would go on to become a professional musician and an internationally acclaimed conductor. He was a man of “firsts,” a trailblazer who overcame racial barriers to break into and find great success in the heavily segregated
world of classical music.
Breaking Barriers
Lewis has been called the “Jackie Robinson of
classical music.” In 1948, he broke racial barriers
when he became the first Black instrumentalist with a
major American symphony orchestra. At only 16
years old, he was also one of the youngest. Twenty
years later, in 1968, he became the first Black person
to serve as a conductor and musical director of a
major American orchestra when he was appointed to
lead the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. In 1972,
he would blaze yet another trail when he became the
first Black conductor to lead the Metropolitan
Opera, where, over the following five years, he would
conduct over 140 performances.