Margaret Rosezarian Harris was a child prodigy who grew up to become the first African American woman to conduct 16 of the country’s major city orchestras, including The Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, and the Detroit Symphony. Harris was born in Chicago, Illinois, and by the age of three she was performing on piano at Chicago’s Cary Temple Auditorium. She performed over twenty short pieces from memory and caused quite a sensation. She became a professional performer, touring the country for three years with her piano teacher and her mother, travelling throughout the United States, being written about in newspapers, and appearing in venues like the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. When Harris was six, her mother stopped the tour and they returned to Chicago so Harris could attend school. Harris continued to play piano and perform. At 10 she performed a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony and soon after won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She moved to Philadelphia with her mother to attend the school, and later continued her musical education by earning a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the Julliard School. As an adult Harris continued to perform on piano, making her debut at Town Hall in New York City in 1970, where she performed one of her own compositions entitled, “Collage One.” She also appeared as a piano soloist with the Great Neck Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Although a gifted pianist, Harris was best known as a conductor. She was the conductor and musical director for several Broadway musicals, gaining national prominence as musical director for Hair. Hair was an unusual show at the time, incorporating rock music and nudity into the traditional Broadway musical format, and when Harris took over the role of musical director she became the first woman to conduct a Broadway musical. Harrison felt it was important to break down barriers between classical and popular music, saying “All I care about is that music be good, and that it communicate with a broader public, without special introduction or apologies. All those barriers between pop and classical are snobbish, artificial.” In the mid-1970s, Harris became general director of the newly-founded Philadelphia-based Opera Ebony, an African American opera company that has performed throughout the United States and the world and is the longest-surviving African American Opera company in the United States. Harris was honored by the National Association of Negro Musicians in 1972. In 1975 she was the first woman to conduct the Detroit Symphony in over fifty years and the first black woman to ever do so. Harris went on to guest conduct many ensembles throughout the country, becoming the first African American woman to conduct the Los Angeles Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Chicago Philharmonic, and many other major American orchestras. In 1995 she was sent to Tashkent, Uzbekistan by the Information Service of the United States Embassy as a cultural consultant for a production of Porgy and Bess. In addition to conducting, composing, and performing music, Harris taught and lectured and worked tirelessly to promote and inspire women and minorities in the field of conducting and in the world of classical music. Margaret Rosezarian Harris died in 2000 at the age of 56. At the time she had recently been appointed associate dean of the Pennsylvania Academy of Music. This story is derived from the Wikipedia article “Margaret Rosezarian Harris,” with additional information from the March 22, 2000, obituary in the New York Times by Anthony Tommasini, “Margaret Rosezarian Harris, Musician and Educator, 56.”

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