
Charles Dickerson leads the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles.
In the January 19 San Francisco Classical Voice, Victoria Looseleaf writes, “ ‘When this ensemble began in 2009,’ said Charles Dickerson, executive director and conductor of the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (ICYOLA), ‘I thought it was a summer project that would last six weeks.’ Sixteen years later, Dickerson is bringing his ensemble—the largest predominantly Black orchestra in the United States—to the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on Feb. 9 for a concert celebrating Black History Month.” Additional performances are scheduled at venues throughout the region in February. Dickerson is on the board of the League of American Orchestras. “The program for these concerts will feature Margaret Bonds’s Montgomery Variations, inspired by pivotal moments in the civil rights movement; Florence Price’s arrangement of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’; and ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ (informally called the ‘Black national anthem’). The orchestra will also perform Festival Overture by one of its members, Kenichi Fortune, and Trial and Triumph by Kenichi and Kevon Fortune…. Dickerson: ‘These young people, they’re the greatest young people in the world. They’re not just excellent musicians. We do not do what we do with this orchestra with the expectation that young people will necessarily become professional musicians … We want the principles and practices and habits that we develop to transfer to all aspects of their lives.’ ”