Berlin, August 27th – Promoting change and celebrating diversity in classical music is the motto of the Chineke! Foundation, founded in 2015 with the fundamental purpose of increasing the presence of Black and other ethnic musicians in European orchestras , primarily those in the United Kingdom. As a logical extension of the foundation, the Chineke! Orchestra was created that same year, followed by the Chineke! Junior Orchestra, made up primarily of very young Black musicians, but with a significant presence of Asian, Indian, and other performers. As Simon Rattle has rightly said, the orchestra is not only an exciting idea, but also an urgently needed project.
A few days ago, the Chineke! Junior Orchestra offered a concert with an engaging mixed repertoire at the Konzerthaus in Berlin , under the baton of Glass Marcano , a young Afro-Venezuelan conductor who was a graffiti artist, a fruit vendor on the streets of Caracas, and a student of the remarkable Venezuelan Sistema, from which she emerged to win the Special Orchestra Prize in Paris in 2020 at the La Maestra Competition for young female conductors. As a direct result, Glass Marcano became the first Black woman to conduct a symphony orchestra in France.
Black root proposals
To open his program with the Chineke! Junior Orchestra, Glass Marcano conducted the Otello Suite, Op. 79, by the Afro-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), a composer, violinist, and conductor who did much to bring Black musical roots into the concert scene .
Considering the dramatic contours of Shakespeare's original, as well as the expressive resources found in other scores dedicated to the Moor of Venice, Coleridge-Taylor's work is less tragic and less dense, and moves in a romantic language with traditional contours.
