Thirty years ago, Armenta (Adams) Hummings Dumisani had a dream: to increase Black visibility in classical music. So she created a three-day festival called “Gateways: Classical Music and the Black Musician” to highlight the important role people of African descent have played in classical music.
Fast forward to today. Gateways Music has hosted multiple festivals and grown a 125+ member orchestra of musicians of color under the leadership of conductor Anthony Parnther. In 2022, the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra made its masterful Carnegie Hall debut as the first all-Black orchestra to be presented by that famed venue, featuring works by Florence Price, George Walker, and Grammy award winner Jon Batiste. Dumisani’s dream has flourished.
Enter Gateways Radio. This radio program highlights the works of Gateways Music Festival and is hosted and produced by Garrett McQueen, who provides commentary and cultural history. He hopes to widen the reach of Gateways' audience through the radio program and draw attention to Gateways' mission.
Their mission is to support professional classical musicians of African descent and enlighten and inspire communities through the power of performance. They are challenging audience members whose unconscious bias may lead them to overlook Black composers. Gateways also reaches musicians for whom this may be the first time they can imagine themselves inhabiting a music-making world they have experienced to be exclusionary. The nonprofit organization is built on the following pillars to further these goals:
- Professional artistry
- Joyful determination
- Productive collaboration
- Community ownership
Host Garrett McQueen is no stranger to radio programs and classical activism. Producer of nationally syndicated programs such as The Sound of 13 and The Sounds of Kwanzaa, McQueen also has a master’s in Bassoon Performance and has been a member of several professional orchestras. He serves on the board of the American Composers Forum and maintains leadership and advisory positions with the Black Opera Alliance, the Gateways Music Festival, and the Lakes Area Music Festival.
Described as a “classical agitator,” McQueen has given music and racial equity presentations with past collaborators including the Sphinx Organization, the Kennedy Center, the Apollo Theater, and the Minnesota Music Teachers Association. His efforts are deeply invested in decolonial work in classical music. Gateways Radio is a chance to showcase underrepresented works from musical traditions around the world that the Western canon often overlooks.
The 2023 Season listings for Gateways Radio features forty unique composers as well as arrangements of traditional spirituals. Alongside famed composers like Brahms, Bach, and Stravinsky, two-thirds of Gateways Radio’s programming features composers of African descent, Afro-Hispanic composers, and women of color, such as Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, and Valerie Coleman. Performers for the program include Juilliard-trained pianist and founder Armenta Hummings Dumisani, saxophonists Branford Marsalis and Thomas Walsh, clarinetists Alexander Laing and Anthony McGill, the Imani Winds, Catalyst Quartet, Harlem Quartet, and the Gateways Orchestra with performances under the baton of Anthony Parnther and Gateways’ late music director Michael Morgan.
Each weekly episode of Gateways Radio will feature multiple pieces by Black composers, performed mostly by the Gateways Orchestra. McQueen provides brief background information and snippets of relevant historical and cultural information to help educate audiences and affirm the important role that musicians of color have long played in classical music.
Classical 101 will air the Gateways Radio series this summer as part of our efforts in diversifying appreciation and knowledge of classical music. Classical 101 begins this important series as part of a Juneteenth celebration. Gateways Radio can be heard Saturdays at 1 pm beginning June 17th.
