“Anthony Parnther made the sobering comment: Of about 2,000 professional orchestras in the U.S., the number of black conductors today can be counted on one hand,” writes Tim Greiving in Wednesday’s (9/11) Los Angeles Times. “Which makes Parnther’s new appointment as music director of the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra all the more notable. He’ll kick off the 2019–2020 season on Friday…. Parnther, who studied music performance at Northwestern and orchestral conducting at Yale … joined band in junior high…. picking the bassoon…. He still plays regularly on Hollywood scoring stages.… He conducts live video game concerts and film scores, and he has brought an orchestral element to live and recorded projects by the likes of Kanye West, Imagine Dragons and, recently, RZA of Wu-Tang Clan…. Parnther also is entering his ninth season as music director of the Southeast Symphony, the historically black orchestra in Los Angeles founded in 1948…. He believes his programming, and his presence onstage, will have a ripple effect…. ‘It’s a little uncomfortable to walk into a room where you see no one that looks like you,’ Parnther said…. ‘Communities come out to a ton of things where they feel that they’re being represented.’ ”
Posted September 12, 2019
In photo: Anthony Parnther conducts Chineke!, a U.K.-based black-and-minority-ethnic orchestra, at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 2018. Photo by Mark Allan
