CHARLES DEAN DIXON
1915—1976

When he was 13, a teacher almost ended Charles Dean Dixon’s career when she urged his mother to “stop wasting her money” and discontinue his musical studies. Fortunately, his mother ignored the advice. Her son went on to become the first Black to conduct a major symphony orchestra, and to achieve fame in many of the capitaLs of Europe.
Dean, as he was more popularly known, was born January 10, 1915, to West Indian parents. His mother, a music lover who disliked popular music, took her young son frequently to Carnegie Hall to expose him to finer sounds. He also began taking violin lessons when he was three. His mother’s persistence paid off when he became so talented on the violin that he began playing the instrument while a student at DeWitt Clinton High School in Harlem. He also began to exhibit a great interest in becoming a conductor. Pursuing this interest, he organized the Dean Dixon Symphony in 1932; and with money gleaned from his own allowance, financed and nurtured the make-shift symphony into a 70-piece orchestra that entertained audiences in the neighborhood.
That same yeai on the strength of a violin audition, Dixon was accepted into the Julliard Institute of Musical Art where he received his B.S. degree. Subsequently, he received a conductor’s fellowship at the Julliard Graduate School, where he mastered all of the orchestra instruments under the watchful tutelage of the famed Albert Stoessel. In 1938, he conducted the 38-piece League of Music Lovers Chamber Orchestra at a ‘lbwn Hall concert. In 1939, he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University ‘lèachers College.
In 1941, Dixon returned to conducting and, at the urging of Eleanor Roosevelt, who had seen him conduct and give a concert at the Heckscher Theatre. Opportunity knocked because Samuel Chotzinofg musical director of the National Broadcasting Company symphony, was in the audience. He was so impressed with Dixon that he eventually made him the director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. This was followed by conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra for two concerts, after which he was cheered by the orchestra members as well as the audience. A high moment in his career occurred in 1948, when he received the $1,000 Mice M. Ditson Award as the Outstanding Music Conductor of the Year.
Despite these moments of acclaim, Dixon wanted to be a permanent music conductor in America. However, racism limited his opportunities and, frustrated, he went to Europe in 1949, where he achieved the status that eluded him in America. He conducted orchestras all over the world. While he was in self-imposed exile, he introduced over 50 American works to the greater European audiences.
In 1960, Dixon was named conductor of the symphony orchestra in Frankfurt, Germany.
In 1968, he returned to America where, during the Olympics in Mexico, he conducted the
Mexican National Symphony Orchestra. During this historic event, he was billed as the
“distinguished American condnctor]’
In 1970, over 20 years after he left America to achieve fame and fortune in a foreign land, he was invited back to the United States, and he conducted orchestras for various concerts in American cities across the nation. He died on November 3, 1976, but his sense of mission and will to succeed remain a beacon of hope to others who tread into frontiers not common for Black artists.