Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins, pictured circa 1880, was a musical prodigy. He was born into slave status in Columbus and spent most of his life performing on the piano for audiences around the country. He also wrote original compositions, including the famous "Battle of Manassas."
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins, pictured circa 1860 at about the age of ten, was born into slave status in Columbus. He was recognized as a musical prodigy by his owner, James Bethune, and was hired out as a child to traveling showman Perry Oliver. During the presidency of James Buchanan (1857-61), Blind Tom became the first African American musician to perform at the White House.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Mattiwilda Dobbs, an Atlanta native and renowned soprano, performed the role of Olympia in the Metropolitan Opera's 1959 production of The Tales of Hoffman by Jacques Offenbach. Dobbs joined the Metropolitan Opera in 1956 and sang with the company for eight seasons.
Photograph by Louis Melancon
Jessye Norman, an Augusta native, began her career as an opera singer in 1969 with the Deutsche Oper Berlin in Germany. She subsequently performed in Milan, Italy, and London, England, before making her debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1983.
Image from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore
Robert Shaw conducted the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra from 1967 to 1988. Credited with building the symphony into a major American orchestra, Shaw received many national and international honors throughout his long career.
Robert Shaw leads a rehearsal of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, circa 1970.
Courtesy of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Archive
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, led by conductor Robert Shaw, is pictured during a performance in 1973. .
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
Classical pianist and composer Beryl Rubinstein spent much of his career at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he served in a number of capacities, including head of the piano department, dean of faculty, and director of the school. Rubinstein, born in Athens in 1898, returned to Georgia in May 1952 to perform concerts in Athens and Atlanta.
Courtesy of Cleveland Institute of Music
Jessye Norman, a native of Augusta, was a world-renowned and highly-decorated operatic soprano. In her lifetime, she received more than thirty honorary degrees, won five Grammys, was awarded the French Legion of Honor, and became the youngest recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor at the age of just fifty-one.
Photograph by John Mathew Smith
Roland Hayes, the renowned African American tenor, earned international acclaim by singing classical and operatic music on the concert stage. Initially compelled to arrange and promote his own concerts, Hayes eventually became the highest-paid tenor in the world, despite the racial barriers that often excluded African Americans from careers in classical music.
Courtesy of Gordon County Chamber of Commerce
This image of Roland Hayes, the internationally known African American tenor, appeared on a program for a 1937 concert he gave in New York City. Hayes began his career with the renowned Jubilee Singers at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and performed his final concert over fifty years later at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Courtesy of University of Iowa Libraries, Redpath Chautauqua Collection.
Roland Hayes, the famous Black tenor, often incorporated "Aframerican religious folk music," or spirituals, into his classical repertoire, as demonstrated by this 1937 program. Hayes arranged the spirituals, which had been passed down orally from generation to generation, for orchestral accompaniment.
Courtesy of University of Iowa Libraries, Redpath Chautauqua Collection.
The acclaimed African American tenor Roland Hayes sits in 1954 for a portrait by photographer Carl Van Vechten. Hayes left his home in Georgia in 1948, several years after a violent conflict with a white store owner in Rome, and spent his remaining years in Massachusetts. After retiring from the stage in 1962, Hayes taught and mentored young musicians during his later years.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, #LC-USZ62-114533.
This portrait of opera singer Mattiwilda Dobbs was made in 1955 by the American photographer Carl Van Vechten, who photographed many notable artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Dobbs, the daughter of prominent Black activist John Wesley Dobbs, was a native of Atlanta and Spelman College graduate who rose to international fame as an opera diva during the 1950s. Dobbs performed at opera houses and festivals around the world, but she did not sing before an integrated audience in her home city until 1962.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, #LOT 12735, no. 306.
A bird's-eye view of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra being led by Music Director Robert Spano in 2003. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) is the most widely recognized orchestra and largest arts organization in the southeastern United States, and has won many honors, including twenty-six Grammys as of 2006.
Courtesy of J.D. Scott
A desire to upgrade the Atlanta Symphony to full professional status resulted in the engagement of Robert Shaw as music director in 1967. After serving for twenty-one years Shaw was appointed music director emeritus and conductor laureate; he died in 1999.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Records, Popular Music and Culture Collection.
A group of children attends a concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, circa 1955.Â
Courtesy of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Archive
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra conductor Robert Spano leads a 2003 rehearsal at the Woodruff Arts Center.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The poster, created in the late 1930s, for the Federal Theatre Project presentation of Run Little Chillun at the Savoy Theatre in San Diego, California. Hall Johnson's folk opera opened on Broadway in New York in 1933.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Work Projects Administration Poster Collection,, #LC-USZC2-5692.
The Knox Institute was founded in 1868 in Athens, which became a center for African American secondary education after the Civil War. Located at the corner of Reese and Pope streets, the prestigious private school offered academic and industrial instruction. The school closed in 1928, and the structure no longer exists.
The composer Wallingford Riegger in New York City in the early 1930s. During this period he composed many dance scores for innovative dancers of the time, including Martha Graham.
From Wallingford Riegger: Two Essays in Musical Biography, by S. Spackman
(Standing left to right) Harold Riegger, Ida Riegger, Constantine Riegger, Wallingford Riegger, with Caroline Riegger (seated) holding Eleanor Riegger (ca. 1903).
From Wallingford Riegger: Two Essays in Musical Biography, by S. Spackman
Howard Swanson's classical music compositions have been performed by major orchestras and leading singers, including Leontyne Price and Marian Anderson.
Courtesy of the Center for Black Music, Columbia College, Chicago. Photograph by Maurice Seymour, New York
Barili became the first professional concert pianist to make his home in Atlanta when he moved there in 1880. In the fall of 1899 Barili opened his own school of music, which offered instruction in piano, voice, organ, Italian language, music history, and music theory.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Alfredo Barili Family Papers, #ac. 1967-0601M.
In 1880 the Italian-born pianist Alfredo Barili (pictured here in his 30s) became the first professional musician to move to Atlanta, where he played a major role in establishing the foundation upon which the city's vibrant classical music culture is based.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Alfredo Barili Family Papers, #ac. 1967-0601M.
Alfredo Barili (pictured here in his 20s) was one of the most respected teachers and musicians in the South by the time of his death in November 1935.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Alfredo Barili Family Papers, #ac. 1967-0601M.
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