The emerging new face of classical music was on display Tuesday evening when gifted 14-year-old violinist Randall Goosby, one of the talented young laureates of the Sphinx Organization, performed at the Bloomberg Tower in Midtown.
The riveting performance served as a prelude for the Organization’s upcoming annual showcase of Virtuosi of Color at Carnegie Hall on October 12. The high-profile event will be hosted by Vanessa Williams and serve as a celebration of Sphinx’s incredibly successful 15-year-track record of engaging and providing opportunities in the world of classical music for young and talented kids in the Black and Latin-American communities.
The organization was founded in 1996 by Aaron Dworkin, an African-American violinist, in an effort to overcome the cultural stereotype of classical music in minority communities, and encourage minority participation and enjoyment of it.
To date, Sphinx has provided more than $300,000 in quality instruments to young, minority musicians and awarded $1,825,000 in prizes and scholarships through its Sphinx Competition. The competition offers Black and Latino classical string players a chance to compete under the guidance of an internationally renowned panel of judges and to perform with established professional musicians in a competition setting.
Mr. Dworkin, who was recently nominated to be a member of the President’s National Council on the Arts, is himself a virtuoso violinist who was motivated to found the organization based on his own difficulties finding entrance and acceptance in the world of classical music.
“Sure I felt resistance, he said, “I was aware that I was the only person who looked like me in my immediate experience. But I had a great mentor (Vladimir Graffman). I studied at Peabody (MA) Prep. I wanted other kids of color to have similar opportunities.” So he did something about it…when he was still a kid.
“While I was still an undergrad at Michigan I assembled a board of directors and advisors and started fund-raising and building the argument for why this is so important to the arts and society,” he says. “I wasn’t really an arts administrator, but a really more of a social entrepreneur.”
A decade-and-a-half later, Sphinx is a testimony to his commitment to opening doors to kids of color to classical music…not only as performers, but as fans.
(Top) Young Sphinx Virtuouso, Randall Goosby; Ms. Vanessa Williams who will host the Carnegie Hall Concert in October.
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For more information about Sphinx, or to purchase tickets to the Carnegie Hall Concert go to:
http://www.sphinxmusic.org/index.html
-Mike Hammer
