THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996 TAG: 9602240346
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Dorothy Maynor, a highly regarded soprano recitalist who founded the Harlem School of the Arts in New York, has died. The 85-year-old was born in Norfolk and lived in Kennett Square, Pa.
Maynor, whose career helped open the way for black artists like Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price, possessed a voice that the New Grove Dictionary of American Music describes as ``a soaring, bell-like soprano capable of exquisite musical effects, supported by a sincere and ardent temperament.''
She took New York by storm in a sold-out recital at Town Hall in 1939 and pursued a successful recital career.
Although she memorized more than 100 operatic roles, she never appeared on an opera stage; there were no such opportunities for a black artist in the late 1930s and the 1940s, when she was in her prime. (Anderson, the first black singer to appear at New York's Metropolitan Opera, did not make her debut there until 1955.)
As a child, Maynor sang in the choir of her father's church.
She entered Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, intending to become a teacher of home economics, but she also joined the renowned Hampton Choir, with which she toured Europe in 1929. On the advice of the choir director, Nathaniel Dett, she changed her major to music and earned a bachelor's degree in 1933.
After being awarded a scholarship, she studied choir direction at the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., where she received a second bachelor's degree in music and choral conducting in 1935. While on tour in New England with the school's choir, she was encouraged by several wealthy benefactors to pursue a concert career.
Three years of private study in New York followed, with Wilfried Klamroth and John Alan Haughton. At this time she changed the spelling of her name from Mainor.
After hearing her sing at the 1939 Berkshire Symphonic Festival at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts, the conductor Serge Koussevitzky reportedly jumped up and down, shouting: ``It is a miracle! It is a musical revelation! The world must hear her!'' Koussevitzky, who called Maynor ``a native Flagstad,'' immediately used her in recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
She made her formal debut at Town Hall in New York later that year, on Nov. 19, in a widely anticipated event that was sold out more than a week in advance.
Maynor began touring extensively in the United States, often appearing as a soloist with leading orchestras. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1940 with the New York Philharmonic.
She sang at the inaugural galas for presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
In 1963 she retired to work with her husband, the Rev. Shelby Rooks, at St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem, where he was pastor. That year she founded the Harlem School of the Arts.
The school offered classes in music, ballet, modern dance, drama and art to poor children for minimal fees and lent or rented instruments to students who did not own one.
``What I dream of is changing the image held by the children,'' she said on another occasion. ``We've made them believe everything beautiful is outside the community. We would like them to make beauty in our community.''
KEYWORDS: DEATH OBITUARY by CNB