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Everett Lee has an impressive resume. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, a student of conducting at Julliard School of Music and Tanglewood, Fulbright Scholar, founder of the Cosmopolitan Symphony, first African American to conduct a major Broadway production, first African American to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the south, first African American to conduct a major opera company in the United States, conductor of a traveling Munich Opera House in Germany, the Symphony of the New World in New York, the Bogota Philharmonic and Bogota Symphony in Columbia, the Musical Director of Norrk\u00f6ping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, and guest conductor at symphony orchestras such as the St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Paris, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Cordoba and New York Philharmonics, the Albany, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Hamburg, Bergen, Barcelona Symphonies, and the Boston Pops, to name a few. And it all started here in Wheeling, West Virginia when a young Everett Lee began taking lessons from a violin teacher on Wheeling Island.<\/p>\n Everett Astor Lee was born 100 years ago today, August 31, 1916, right here in Wheeling, WV. The first-born son of Everett Denver Lee and Mamie May Blue Lee, who lived in East Wheeling, young Everett showed an early aptitude for playing violin.<\/p>\n \u201cI asked him about this violin teacher,\u201d Everett\u2019s son, Everett Lee III commented. \u201cHe thought about it, and I always love saying, \u2018Dad that was only 90 years ago, what\u2019s the problem that you can\u2019t remember this?\u2019 He came up with Walter.\u201d<\/p>\n It was Walter. Walter Rogers of S. York Street. \u201c[Dad] knows what he\u2019s talking about,\u201d Everett\u2019s son continued, \u201cand there\u2019s nothing in music that you can bring up that he doesn\u2019t remember or know.\u201d<\/p>\n Walter Rogers was born in Boston in 1880 but lived in Wheeling from 1882 until his death in 1962. He helped organize the Wheeling Rotary Orchestra in 1919, he conducted the Young People\u2019s Orchestra, and from his home on 407 S. York St., he taught music lessons, specializing in violin and trumpet. \u201c[Dad] was taking violin,\u201d Everett III \u00a0relayed, \u201cand Walter told Daddy Lee (Everett\u2019s father), you need to do what you need to do with him because he\u2019s got it<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Everett\u2019s father had been a barber here in Wheeling, first with Hollinger & Carr at 1149 Main Street in the late teens, then with J. M. Freismuth at 31 14th<\/sup> Street in the 1920s. But the family, which by then included Everett\u2019s younger brother, Kenneth, left Wheeling for Cleveland in 1927 in search of better employment opportunities. Lee continued his studies in violin while attending school in Cleveland. \u201cI told you about Jesse Owens, didn\u2019t I?\u201d Everett\u2019s son asked. \u201cYeah, Jesse went to the same junior high school. [Dad] was in a lower grade and, on the track team at Fairmont Junior High, Jesse would say, \u2018C\u2019mon, Everett, c\u2019mon, c\u2019mon,\u2019 and Jesse would be loping and Dad would be running his heart out.\u201d<\/p>\n After graduating from high school, Lee attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying violin. \u201cHe had to put himself through school, so he didn\u2019t graduate in three years or four years. It took a little bit because he was [working in a hotel], and I think he did some other things while at college, at the Cleveland Institute of Music.\u201d It was while working at this hotel that Everett met Arthur Rodzinski, conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra.<\/p>\n \u201cSomebody told [Rodzinski] that this kid is a very promising musician, and he just asked me \u2018who are you?\u2019\u201d Everett recalled in an interview with the American Music Review<\/em> in 2013. \u201cAnd I told him, and he said, \u2018well, come to my concerts.\u2019 Every Saturday I could go to the Cleveland Orchestra concerts.\u201d In 1948, Lee told a reporter from the Pittsburgh Courier<\/em>, \u201cMy early conducting aspirations were nurtured by him\u2026 Rodzindki helped me in many ways\u2014he would go over scores with me and give me pointers.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Music, Lee enlisted in the military. He was sent to Tuskegee to train to be a pilot, but an injury in jump school ended his military career.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen he got hurt,\u201d Lee\u2019s son recollected, \u201che went back to Cleveland, and around April or May, Billy Rose, one of the big-time producers on Broadway called and said, \u2018Everett, I\u2019ve heard about you. I\u2019m getting ready to do Carmen Jones<\/em> and I want you to come to New York and be in my orchestra.\u2019 So he goes to New York, meets my mother in June of \u201843 \u2013 the season is in the fall of \u201843, and the story is the conductor got snowed in and dad, who was concertmaster, showed up and they handed him the baton and said, \u2018It\u2019s your turn. You get to go. We don\u2019t have a conductor.\u2019 And they knew that he was on top of his game and he knew everything about the stuff he was doing. So, that happened. And then in January, he married my mother and the following November, I came.\u201d<\/p>\n Everett Lee III\u2019s mother, by the way, was Sylvia Olden Lee, another impressive figure in the classical music world \u2013 a voice coach, Olden Lee was a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, instructor at the Curtis Institute, Howard, Oberlin, Columbia, and Dillard Universities, also a Fulbright Scholar, and the first African American musician to work at the New York Metropolitan Opera.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was \u2013 and my mother the same way \u2013 they were both prodigies. And I know how to play radio,\u201d the Lees\u2019 son joked. \u201cI was conceived, born, and bred in opera. There\u2019s not an aria I haven\u2019t heard. And [mom] could do about 80 of them by heart. No question. And any key you want to sing it in.\u201d Lee III recalled that, in the early years, his father still made a living predominantly as a violinist and his mom as a voice coach. A connection through one of Sylvia\u2019s students led to Lee\u2019s second conducting engagement with Leonard Bernstein\u2019s On the Town<\/em>\u00a0in 1944.<\/p>\n \u201cMuriel Smith, who had sung the role of Carmen Jones, was my mother\u2019s student. Muriel told Lennie [Leonard Bernstein] that Sylvia was married to Everett. Lennie remembered him from Carmen Jones<\/em> and that\u2019s how the ball got rolling for On the Town.\u00a0<\/em>Lennie had seen him conduct one of the shows.\u201d Lee became concertmaster for On the Town<\/em> and when the conductor left, the company couldn\u2019t find a suitable replacement. \u201cSo Lennie,\u201d Lee\u2019s son shared, \u201csaid,\u00a0\u2018Put Everett up there. He knows the music inside and out.\u2019<\/em> And dad closed out the show.\u201d<\/p>\n Following On the Town<\/em>, Bernstein and Lee continued to work together. \u201cLeonard introduced him to all kinds of folks at Tanglewood, which is an extension of Julliard. Dad went to Julliard for a year or two. He did some work at Tanglewood which is the Boston Symphony\u2019s arm on the west side of Massachusetts.\u201d Following Tanglewood, Lee played first violin for the New York Symphony under Bernstein, who was conductor of the Symphony from 1945-1947.[2] When Arthur Rodzinski, whom Lee had met as a teenager, left Cincinnati in 1943 to became the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, he had hired Bernstein as his assistant director. [3] \u00a0In 1958, Bernstein became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, \u201cand then in \u201876, dad conducted the New York Philharmonic because of his relationship with Lennie.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with his connections to Rodzinski and Bernstein, opportunities for a black conductor were limited for Lee, so in 1947, he formed the Cosmopolitan Symphony Society, a group that not only included Americans of Chinese, Russian, Jewish, African American, Italian and Slavic descent, but also female musicians. \u00a0\u201cMy own group is coming along fairly well, but\u00a0of course there is no money in it as yet,\u201d Lee wrote to Bernstein. \u201cI hope to make it grow into something good however and it may be the beginning of breaking down a lot of foolish barriers.\u201d [4]<\/p>\n Lee would conduct the Cosmopolitan Symphony Society\u2013while picking up other jobs\u2013from 1947 into the 1950s, garnering praises from The New York Times<\/em> as a conductor \u201cwho possesses decided talent.\u201d [5] \u00a0Still, Lee told The American Music Review<\/em> in a 2013 interview, that navigating a career in the U.S. \u201cwas a struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n With limited conducting opportunities at home, Everett and Sylvia, both receiving Fulbright scholarships, left the United States in 1952 for a year, studying music in Rome. \u201cThey went to Europe and came back in \u201953. They came out to see us [in Cleveland, where Everett III and sister Eve had stayed with their Lee grandparents] in the summer and went back to New York. At Christmas, we came up and we said we\u2019re not going back to Cleveland.\u00a0 We moved to Brooklyn and I spent half of my fourth year and all of my fifth year\u00a0in Brooklyn.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1953, Lee was asked to guest conduct the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky, making him the first African American to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the south. Another first came two years later, while conducting at the New York City Opera Company. The Wheeling-News Register,<\/em> in a front-page lead article on Tuesday, April 19, 1955, reported, \u201cWheeling native, Everett Lee, believed to be the first Negro to conduct professional grand opera in this country, scored an overwhelming success Sunday when he directed the New York City Opera Company\u2019s performance of Verdi\u2019s La Traviata.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n In 1956, the family moved to Germany, where Lee became the director of the M\u00fcnchener Opernb\u00fchne, a traveling opera company that performed throughout Germany. [7]<\/p>\n \u201cDad was told, if you want to be a great conductor, you need to do opera. And that was some of the concentration he did at Tanglewood or Julliard or both,\u201d Lee\u2019s son commented. \u201cHe\u2019s a great dad. I had little or no interest in music, and I was reasonably active as a child. I remember we were, when we went over [to Germany] we stayed in a hotel before they got a place to live and the four of us were in two rooms. I remember him studying for music class. The bed\u2019s on one side and he\u2019d put the music on the other bed which was just in a little aisle between us, and I\u2019d say, \u2018Okay, dad, draw.\u2019 You know, cowboys, right? He\u2019d put down his score. He would draw, and that would satisfy my three-second attention span. And he\u2019d go right back to [his score].\u201d Lee\u2019s son added his dad conducted symphonic pieces without music, having memorized the music before performances.<\/p>\n In 1962, Lee was appointed conductor of the Norrk\u00f6ping Symphony in Sweden, a position he held for thirteen years. In the years that followed, though Norrk\u00f6ping remained his permanent residence, Lee became involved with and conducted for the Symphony of the New World in New York, the Bogota Philharmonic in Columbia, and Opera North in Philadelphia, while continuing to guest conduct for orchestras worldwide, [8] traveling back and forth to Sweden.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s been through the whole ball game. He had issues in the \u201840s, needless to say, the \u201840s and the \u201850s. He left the country because he wasn\u2019t going to get anywhere. And in Europe, he got on with a traveling opera company, did a whole bunch of those, and then conducted symphonic stuff on three continents: Europe, North America, South America \u2013 and those are non-trivial orchestras. The Berlin Philharmonic is a non-trivial, one of the top in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Bogot\u00e1 Philharmonic Orchestra. Madrid Philharmonic. Boston Pops. New York Philharmonic. Non-trivial orchestras, indeed.<\/p>\n Lee conducted his last orchestra, January 13, 2005, for the Louisville Orchestra \u2013 the same symphony orchestra that started his career as a conductor of major symphony orchestras. Today, he still lives in Sweden, in Malm\u00f6, with his second wife and son.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do Skype,\u201d Lee\u2019s son said, \u201cYou know Beethoven? I would run it through speakers in the house and I\u2019d be up waving my arms. I\u2019d be handling the fourth movement of the 7th<\/sup>, waving my arms around like I\u2019m conducting. And he says, \u2018You\u2019re conducting in 4\/4 and it really should be a 2\/4 so the orchestra will keep up with you\u2026,\u2019 and I said, \u201cDad, you don\u2019t know what the hell you\u2019re talking about. That\u2019s a 4\/4 beat!\u2019 I\u2019m debating with somebody that\u2019s forgotten more about music than I have ever learned. \u2018You don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about dad! That\u2019s 4\/4 there, not 2\/4, 4\/4.\u2019 Oh yeah, yeah. There\u2019s nothing that he doesn\u2019t know. Very little.\u201d<\/p>\n A six-year on-going project, Lee\u2019s son has been working with his father to compile a list of all the works Lee has conducted throughout his career. \u201cWe put this, a good part of this together, one email at a time, starting with the \u2018A\u2019s, because the scores in his office are arranged in alphabetical order.\u201d Lee wrote where and when he conducted a piece on the opening flap or the back page of a score, most of the time. \u201cUnbelievable, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Lee\u2019s son asked.<\/p>\n \u201cOn my Excel spreadsheet, there are over nine hundred lines of orchestral works that he performed. When I sort it, I can tell you how many times he did Stravinsky\u2019s Suite #2. I can tell you how many times he performed Dvorak\u2019s Symphony of the New World. The Ninth. He loved it. He did that, I would guess, eight or nine times. I\u2019m not in front of my computer right now, so I can\u2019t say for sure.\u201d Actually, according to the spreadsheet, it was 14, and there are nearly 1000 lines for orchestral pieces with another 100 if you include choral and operatic and the two Broadway works Lee conducted. Everett Lee, the young boy who started his career taking violin lessons on Wheeling Island, has had a prolific and groundbreaking career.<\/p>\n When asked about his dad\u2019s reaction to being told people from Wheeling were inquiring about him, Lee\u2019s son responded, \u201cHe couldn\u2019t believe it. He\u2019s been getting calls from the embassies in Europe congratulating him on getting to be a 100. And then I get an email from Wheeling, West Virginia. Amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n Wheeling, WV has not forgotten Everett Lee, and we think that he is truly amazing.<\/p>\n This story would not be complete without a very happy birthday wish to Everett A. Lee \u2013 Happy 100th<\/sup> Birthday from all of Wheeling, West Virginia, Maestro Lee! \u2013 and many thanks to Everett\u2019s son, Everett Lee III, for sharing his knowledge and memories with us.<\/p>\n Special thanks also to my predecessor in the Ohio County Public Library Archives, former Assistant Director Lou Horacek, who, after finding two News-Register<\/em> clippings in our Mabel Hull scrapbooks, did the initial research on Everett Lee and left a file behind for me to find, piquing my interest and getting me started down the path to writing this story.<\/p>\n Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n [1]\u00a0\u201cEverett Lee and the Racial Politics of Orchestral Conducting,\u201d Oja, Carol J.,\u00a0 American Music Review<\/em>, Volume XLIII, Number 1, Fall 2013. Update<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Everett](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.archivingwheeling.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Dad-and-Kenneth.jpg\")
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\n[2] Ibid.
\n[3] Ibid.
\n[4] Ibid.
\n[5] \u201cSymphony Group in Formal Debut,\u201d New York Times<\/em>, May 22, 1948.
\n[6] \u201cEverett Lee and the Racial Politics of Orchestral Conducting,\u201d Oja, Carol J.,\u00a0 American Music Review<\/em>, Volume XLIII, Number 1, Fall 2013.
\n[7]\u00a0Dialogues on the Opera and the African-American Experience<\/em>, Cheatham, Wallace McClain Cheatham, 1997.
\n[8] Ibid.<\/p>\n
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