The first time Gateways Music Festival executive director Alex Laing sat down for a rehearsal with the festival orchestra, he forgot how to count.
“My life had what you might call ‘two competing truths’ — which was this commitment and dedication to becoming a professional classical musician (and) trying to wrestle your nervous system in submission to this incredible choreography,” he said. “But the other truth competing with that was my interest in being more useful to Black people and Black culture, and those two interests very rarely complemented each other until I came to Gateways.”
The festival, which brings together musicians of African descent to perform classical music, has been hosted in Rochester since 1997. This year, the festival will hold performances across the city from April 21-24.
Even in 2001, Laing was no stranger to the setting of an orchestra at the top of its game — he had just finished a fellowship with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra — but this was different. He looked up to see a Black conductor; to his left and right, other Black classical musicians. Everyone on stage reflected him and his journey. In a coalescence of his interests, Laing found himself at the epicenter of something special.
Since then, Laing has been a consistent force with Gateways, both volunteering and sitting on their board until assuming his current position last year. The organization was an entirely grassroots volunteer organization until 2015, when they were able to hire their first full-time employee (Laing’s predecessor, Lee Koonce).
Laing has seen the festival’s impact on Rochester as well as Chicago, where he went to grad school, and on New York City, where the festival will be traveling again this year from April 25-27 after the Rochester programming concludes.
“This festival really demonstrates this wonderful mix of tradition in motion,” he said. “I’m excited for our new collaborations.”
Gateways is supported by Eastman’s George Walker Center for Equity and Inclusion in Music, and their shows in Rochester this year span from a free musical lecture on composer William Levi Dawson, presented in collaboration with The William Levi Dawson Institute for Classical and Folk Music at Tuskegee University to a reinterpreted Afrofuturist version of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” The Gateways Brass Collective, mainstays of the festival, will be performing for free at Hochstein as well.
For events that require tickets, seating ranges from $20-$30. Seats in Kodak Hall often go for triple the price at other events — but for Gateways, this accessibility is key.
“Bringing together people of all backgrounds, ages, levels of experience with classical music — that’s critical to us,” Laing said. “You can’t enlighten and inspire an empty hall. We need the audience, and it’s important for us to make it as easy as possible for them to be with us.”
The Gateways Festival Orchestra will be ending their week by performing William Levi Dawson’s “Negro Folk Symphony” at Carnegie Hall. It will be the first time the symphony has been performed there since Dawson’s orchestra played it in 1934.
“We have the Dawson symposium [in Rochester] which will really allow us to dive in deeper and share with people the story and power behind this work and why it matters,” Laing said. “We’re particularly excited to realize it, to bring it back to life inside this hall.”
In order to continue expanding the community space Gateways creates for their musicians, the festival ensures a third of the performers are completely new each year. Those new performers may be experiencing that same feeling of wonderment and belonging that Laing did decades ago; while longtime Gateways performers get to see the growth of the orchestra in a way that heralds further positive change both in Rochester and beyond.
“It’s wonderful, it feels like I can relax,” Dr. Mellasenah Edwards, a violinist who has been performing for decades with the festival orchestra, said. “To see these young people coming in and playing just as well, or even better — it’s great.”
Edwards received her undergraduate degree from Eastman in 1989. After four years of performing in Rochester, her first time performing for an audience of predominantly BIPOC listeners was during Gateways.
Since then, traveling from Baltimore — where she currently works as the head of the music department at the Baltimore School for the Arts — to Rochester has become a much-loved tradition. She only sees some friends through Gateways, so returning feels like coming home, in a way.
This year, Edwards is also excited to see her daughter Lauren, a sophomore at Eastman. Gateways is part of the reason why Lauren ended up auditioning for Eastman in the first place — the two visited in her junior year of high school when the festival was being held, and it was the first time Lauren had seen an all-Black orchestra perform on that scale.
In the future, Edwards hopes her daughter auditions for Gateways and finds the same community she has benefited from for decades.
“Normally in a department, you tend to find yourself as one of the only people of color in the room,” Edwards said. “It’s a family situation — it’s a different feeling from when we go and play with other ensembles. There’s nothing like it.” gatewaysmusicfestival.org
Alyssa Koh is an intern at CITY. She can be reached at alyssa@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
