The Sphinx Organization, founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of young Black and Latino classical musicians. The first winner of the organization’s annual Sphinx Competition to perform at Chautauqua was cellist Patrice Jackson, who guest soloed with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra in 2003, a year after she became a first-place laureate in the competition.
Violinist Bryan Hernandez-Luch followed as a CSO guest soloist in 2004; since then, dozens of Sphinx Competition laureates have performed in just about all of Chautauqua’s music venues, from chamber music in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall to Amphitheater performances with the CSO; with the establishment of the CSO Fellows program in partnership with the Sphinx Organization, the number of Sphinx artists at Chautauqua has grown even more since 2018. The eight CSO Fellows this summer marks the largest cohort to date.
The man behind it all, the founder of the Sphinx Organization, is Aaron Dworkin — a violinist, social entrepreneur, celebrated author and artist — who returns to the Institution as part of the Week Six Chautauqua Lecture Series and its theme “Exploring the Transformative Power of Music.” Dworkin will deliver his presentation, titled “Lessons in Gratitude: Excellence, Representation, and the Transformative Power of the Arts,” at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amp, discussing the impact of diversity and representation in classical music and the enduring power of empowered artists as leaders in society.
Dworkin is former dean and current Professor of Arts Leadership & Entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan, a 2005 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, and was President Barack Obama’s first appointment to the National Council on the Arts. Dworkin is also the founder of the Institute of Poetjournalism — a term he originated, which he defines as “the research, creation, and distribution of writing that evokes an emotional connection to news related subjects or other relevant ideas utilizing elements of sound, meter, rhythm and/or creative illustration.”
Dworkin first spoke from the Amp stage in 2007, with a morning lecture on “Breaking the Sound Barrier: The Sphinx Organization and Classical Music.” He talked about attending the University of Michigan, where he learned about Black and Latino composers and musicians — people like violinist George Augustus Polgreen Hightower, who was a friend of Beethoven’s, and Sanford Allen, who became the first Black musician in any major American orchestra when he joined the New York Philharmonic in 1961. Why, he asked, had no one told him?
“No one had ever told me about Black composers,” he said in an interview with Daily reporter Sara Macho. “I was under the assumption that many composers had been white. At classical concerts I think none, if less than a handful, of participants had been minorities.”
For many minorities, Dworkin told Macho, classical music “is an art form they’ve never been exposed to, or excluded from, or had no opportunity to participate.” In founding Sphinx, Dworkin wanted to change that, creating an outlet for young musicians to take their experiences and “express them through music.”
The work is a gift, he said — “but for me, what I do is not work. My students are an inspiration to me every day.”