Conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson on Orchestrating Change

Jeri Lynne Johnson is “one of the few black women conductors leading the nation’s 1,600 orchestras,” reports DeMarco Morgan in a segment on Thursday’s (3/23) ABC News. “A 2016 study from the League of American Orchestras estimates only 20% of them are conducted by women. We recently caught up with maestro Jeri Lynne Johnson before a performance of her Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra [in] Philadelphia. Johnson: At four, I started piano lessons and then some family friends took me to my first orchestra concert. I very clearly remember falling in love with the music…. The earliest obstacles were really … because I was a Black woman. I was told that … I did not look like what the audience would expect the maestro to look like and that was very painful. But also, very eye-opening. It made me realize that … part of my job would be to maybe change that narrative around what a leader looks like not just on the podium but in life in general and that’s when I started Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra…. At Black Pearl … it is different instruments, different viewpoints, different ethnicities … in one place creating beautiful music. That’s what I want people to take away, that this is America.’ ”