Kazem abdullah biography of barack obama

We’re sorry, this site is currently experiencing technical difficulties.
Please try again in a few moments.
Reference ID:

"There's no set course if you want to be a conductor," says Kazem Abdullah, 29, who makes his Met debut this week in Orfeo ed Euridice. An assistant conductor there the past four seasons, he now emerges from that shady underworld, taking center pit on Wednesday and Saturday.

"I'm not nervous," said the Indiana-born, Dayton-raised musician, whose exotic name was bestowed by his Sierra Leonean father. "It's going to be lots of fun."

At rehearsal, Abdullah works out a tricky music cue as the craggy set slowly revolves, bearing mezzo Stephanie Blythe as Orpheus who leads soprano Danielle de Niese out of Hades before totally blowing it. James Levine gives a few pointers to the young maestro, poised and confident, as histrionic director Mark Morris fine-tunes the singers' movement in his dance-savvy production.

"What's so amazing is how Gluck did much with so little," observed Abdullah. "His opera is only 90 minutes, but goes through the whole gamut of human emotions, with the simplest of musical means." For sure. It's a feature-length, less-is-more masterpiece from 1762.

Abdullah started on clarinet, excelling to the point where he could play in the New World Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas. He had already flirted with conducting in classes at Aspen and Verbier, but decided to go the whole hog in Miami.

"I really got to experiment at New World," said Abdullah who showed initiative by taking up the baton for challenging pieces by Schoenberg and others. "Kazem's this calm, sunny, constructive personality in the service of rather difficult music," said an impressed Tilson Thomas. Abdullah furthered his technique under Gustav Meier at the Peabody Conservatory, whipping together concert performances of Ariadne auf Naxos and Cosi fan tutte with the same get-up-and-go.

His role in opera, he says, is to "keep the dramatic flow, and help the singer be the best they can." Levine, who has mentored him the past two summers in Tanglewood, says, "Kaze

The Sphinx Competition is an annual competition, held in Michigan, for young Black and Latino string students.

Violinist.com Interview with Alexandra Switala, 2011 Sphinx Competition Junior Division Winner

 Violinist Alexandra Switala, 17, was no stranger to the Sphinx Competition when she won the Junior Division earlier this month. Her brother, Robert Switala, won the Junior Division in 2007, and this was the fourth time Alexandra herself had competed in the competition.

She credits her previous experience with the Sphinx for helping her cultivate the right mind-set and seek out the right kind of help to put her in a position to win this year.

Alexandra Switala, photo by Glenn Triest

The Sphinx Competition is held every year in the Detroit area to encourage minority participation in classical music. Alexandra, who is originally from Grapevine, Texas, near Dallas, spoke to me from Chicago, where she has been living in order to study with Almita and Roland Vamos.

Laurie: When did you start playing violin, and what made you decide to do so?

Alexandra: I started playing violin when I was four years old. My mom had always taken my brother and me to concerts, and she took us to a children's concert, where there were kids, a little older than us, playing the violin. I told my mom that I wanted to play the violin – actually I didn't say "violin," I just pointed and said, 'I want to play that!' So she started us with the Suzuki method. You don't start reading right away with the Suzuki method, you just learn by ear, and I really liked that because I've always been naturally musical.

Laurie: What is your history with the Sphinx?

Alexandra: I wasn't in it last year, but I was in it the three years previous to that. My brother, Robert Switala, competed in 2006. I didn't compete that year, but I saw him do it, and I saw the good friend

Seventy years ago, when a young Black American conductor was canvassing Europe for conducting opportunities, a Swedish concert manager offered him an extraordinary proposition. If the conductor would consider wearing whitening makeup and white gloves, he told a New York Times reporter on July 19, 1970, “an engagement would be considered.”

It was a preposterous notion, even for 1952. Despite that request—which he ignored—Dean Dixon would go on to become music director of Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Germany’s Frankfurt Radio Symphony, and Australia’s Sydney Symphony, and he had a full calendar of international guest-conducting dates, leading as many as 125 concerts a year. In postwar Europe, he would achieve something that was nearly impossible for a Black conductor in the United States: to be regarded as a musician first and foremost, without regard to race. Europe was certainly no post-racial paradise, but during that period in the U.S. there was little hope for an African American with orchestral leadership in mind. The history of Black conductors crafting a career in America mirrors the journey of Black classical singers; before the war, Germany and Austria embraced the artistry of contralto Marian Anderson, tenor Roland Hayes, and others, and their European bona fides boosted their American careers. And if Europe was a more comfortable haven for singers and conductors, that was also true for instrumentalists.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, as Black Americans marched and protested to sit at lunch counters and integrate southern schools and transit systems, Dixon became one of the most successful American conductors in Europe, where he had moved because there were better professional opportunities. Dixon had tried in the U.S., and even formed his own orchestra while a student at Juilliard in the 1930s, but soon gave up on an American career. “I felt like I was on a sinking ship,” Dixon said of his decision to leave the U.S. and move to Europe. “And