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Calvin E. Simmons, American musician and conductor, (April 27, 1950 - August 21, 1982) born in Oakland, Alameda County, California. At the age of nine he entered the Bay Area's musical scene and began living his dream of becoming a world-class musician. By the age of eleven, he was conducting the San Francisco Boys Chorus. After working as assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic he became musical director of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra at age twenty-eight. He was the first African-American to be named conductor of a major U.S. symphony orchestra and a frequent guest conductor with some of the nation's major opera companies and orchestras. His final concerts were three performances of the Requiem of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the summer of 1982 with the Masterworks Chorale and the Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra. He died in a canoeing accident on August 21, 1982, at the age of thirty-two and is buried in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California. The Oakland Symphony Orchestra was reorganized in July 1988 as the Oakland East Bay Symphony Orchestra. Simmons has been honored by the naming of the Calvin Simmons Theatre at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland.
[edit] Sources
- Wolfe, Rinna Evelyn, The Calvin Simmons Story: Or, Don't Call Me Maestro, Muse Wood Press, Berkeley, California
- http://query.nytimes.com archives article dated, August 23, 1982 and September 9, 1982.
- Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, California web link below http://www.cypresslawn.com/notables_simmons.html
- The posting of his bio by John T. Griffith on Find A Grave at link below http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7680460&pt=Calvin%20Simmons
