The room was packed on February 26 at the San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox space, when the orchestra hosted a full-day Racial Equity Foundations Workshop, which brought together 30 area arts organizations to build a movement to advance racial equity in and through the arts in the city. Joseph Conyers, assistant principal bass of the Philadelphia Orchestra, gave the keynote address (pictured below). Representatives of arts organizations of all sizes attended the workshop, which covered the impact of individual, institutional, and structural racism and bias. Participants also contributed ideas for a future sector-wide racial equity working group to be led by the San Francisco Arts Commission. In addition to performing in the Philadelphia Orchestra, Conyers is an active music-education advocate. He is executive director of Philadelphia’s Project 440 music-education program and a 2019 Sphinx Organization Medal of Excellence recipient.
