Armenta (Hummings) Dumisani

Acclaimed award-winning concert pianist, educator, and community activist Armenta (Hummings) Dumisani is the visionary founder of the Gateways Music Festival. She is a former Associate Professor of Music at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY and served as the school’s Distinguished Community Mentor from 1994 until 2009.

Dumisani launched Gateways in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1993 to bring classical music to a wider audience, inspire young musicians and build an artistic community for Black professional classical musicians from across the country. She brought the festival to Rochester shortly after her appointment to the Eastman School of Music faculty and served as its President & Artistic Director until her retirement in 2009.

From the start, Armenta maintained a core belief in the Black community and its ability to support the Festival and, for nearly 25 years, it was staffed and funded primarily by community volunteers.  Gateways has since grown into a professionally-staffed artistic home for countless Black classical musicians, approximately 125 of whom provide dozens of chamber, solo, and full orchestra concerts during the multi-day festival.

Immediately upon its founding, the Festival was embraced by the musicians as a safe haven and artistic home. Inspired by their experiences at Gateways, many have gone on to create their own organizations and concert series or emerge as leaders within the broader classical music field.

While a professor at the Eastman School of Music, Dumisani could be seen pushing a cart full of musical instruments through the streets of Rochester–in partnership with local churches, schools, senior centers and libraries–to bring classical music directly to the community. She created meaningful programs in the community, including chamber music performances in the homes of Black community members; Sunday morning chamber music performances at Black churches; music instruction for children living in homeless shelters; and opportunities for young Black musicians to sit alongside professional musicians in rehearsal and performance.

Armenta Adams was born in Cleveland, Ohio on June 27, 1936, to parents Albert and Estella Adams who loved music, especially classical music. When she was four years old and her brother Elwyn seven, her parents arranged for them to take piano and violin lessons at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where they lived during the school year. [Elwyn Adams (1933-1995) became an accomplished concert violinist, concertmaster and a professor of music at the University of Florida.]

Dumisani received a full scholarship to The Juilliard School of Music (the school’s name when she was a student) where she studied from 1954-1960 and from which she received both Bachelor of Science and Master of Music degrees, studying under revered pianist and teacher Sascha Gorodnitzki. During her second year at Juilliard, she won the school’s piano competition performing Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor with the Juilliard Orchestra. In 2005, she was named one of the “Juilliard 100” which honored distinguished alumni during the school’s centennial.

Dumisani made her debut at New York City’s Town Hall in 1960, later performing at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She gave concerts across Europe under a Martha Baird Rockefeller Aid to Music award, which she was awarded twice, and in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia through sponsorship of the U.S. State Department, including a world festival in Senegal (1966) where she appeared along with Duke Ellington. Her international performances spanned twenty-seven countries on five continents. Upon her return from a state department tour, she was honored at a reception at the State Department attended by then-Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, in recognition of her contributions to international relations.

She was also a winner of the John Hay Whitney Competition, the New York Musicians Club Piano Competition, the Musical America Musician of the Year Award, the National Association of Negro Musicians Competition, and the first Leeds (UK) International Competition Special Prize. She has appeared at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, the Beethoven Festival in Carbondale, IL, and at the International Piano Festival at the University of Maryland as a guest artist in the Great Performer Series.

In retirement, Dumisani returned to Winston-Salem, NC to live and occasionally perform.