“Maurice Todd is no stranger to the stage,” writes Lucy May on Friday (1/6) at WCPO.com (Cincinnati). “He’s a section bassist in the Lexington Philharmonic. He’s performed his double bass with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Grand Rapids Symphony, Richmond Symphony and Kentucky Symphony and has been a soloist with several orchestras, too. Now Todd is counting on an innovative partnership between the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the CSO to help him reach his next major goal: landing a job with one of the great American orchestras. Todd is one of five outstanding string musicians selected for the first class of a program called CSO/CCM Diversity Fellows.… The program targets talented musicians from minority groups that are underrepresented in American orchestras to prepare them for jobs in the industry.… A 2016 study commissioned by the League of American Orchestras found that only 2.5 percent of all orchestra musicians were Hispanic or Latino in 2014, and only 1.8 percent of all musicians were black.… A second study released in 2016 by the League … concluded with recommendations for making fellowships more successful, including several that CCM and the CSO already had built into the Diversity Fellows program here.”
Posted January 6, 2017
Pictured: The inaugural CSO/CCM Diversity Fellows with Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Music Director Louis Langrée. Photo by AJ Waltz
