Michael Morgan

Celebrating a Legacy and Boldly Embracing the Future

 August 21, 2021 | 10:03 PM

Michael Morgan’s passing is a tremendous loss for the Gateways Music Festival and for the entire international classical music community. 

Michael was passionate about Gateways and his efforts, especially over the last five years, have led us to the place we are today—eight months away from the Gateways Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut, the first all-Black classical symphony orchestra to be featured by Carnegie Hall in its 130-year history. 

I first got to know Michael in 1978 when I was 18 years old and an entering freshman piano performance major at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music―he an already-revered upper classman. Our paths have crossed many times throughout our professional lives—at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when he was Assistant Conductor and I was Director of Community Relations and later in my role as chair of Gateways’ Artistic Programs Committee, and finally as Gateways’ President & Artistic Director and he as Music Director and Conductor. For me, a world without Michael is inconceivable. 

Over the years, I witnessed Michael blossom into his full and wonderful self—openly gay, unapologetically Black and with an astute and often acerbic view of the state of the classical music industry—especially in its mostly failed attempts to find a way to fully include everyone.

I believe that his greatest legacy, however, will be his honesty as a human being and as a musician, his fearlessness in the breaking of traditions, his ability to authentically connect the orchestra with the local community beyond the concert hall and for showing us a new model for what an American “maestro” could be. If the United States had 20 more Michael Morgan’s leading major orchestras across the country, I suspect that all the conversations we’ve had over the years about the lack of diversity in classical music and its lack of relevance would be virtually nonexistent.

Michael believed deeply in the mission of Gateways. He conducted the very first Gateways Music Festival in 1993 with violinist Louis Farrakhan playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, a concert which received positive reviews in the New York Times. He knew that it would be criticized, but one of Michael’s many gifts was to see everyone’s humanity and he offered an alternative view of the Minister as an outstanding musician with a deep love of classical music. It was a fearless act and one that not many (any?) other conductors would have had the audacity to take.

Michael’s belief in Gateways was so profound that he never accepted an honorarium and even insisted on paying for his own transportation to the Festival. He believed that our cause—to provide a safe, affirming and artistically invigorating musical home for Black classical musicians—was of paramount importance and that whatever would have been spent on his fee or travel should be put back into the organization or used to offset musician honoraria.

We will dedicate Gateways Orchestra's Carnegie Hall debut on April 24, 2022 to Michael’s memory and will carry on just as he would have wanted us to—boldly, unapologetically Black and with a commitment “to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

While I am immeasurably saddened that Michael will not be with us in person at Carnegie Hall, I can’t help but think of Martin Luther King’s famous words: “I’ve been to the mountaintop…I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” 

Michael’s passion, musicianship and commitment have led Gateways Music Festival to achieve this great milestone and we know his spirit will fill the hall on that Sunday afternoon next April. We are forever in his debt and vow to keep his memory alive.

Lee Koonce
President & Artistic Director
Gateways Music Festival

August 21, 2021