Here are just a few Black performers who changed the course of classical music… and continue to inspire us today!

Marian Anderson broke barriers throughout her career, from her 1939 Easter Sunday performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to her 1955 performance at the Metropolitan Opera.

NEW YORK (AP) — More than 60 years after Marian Anderson broke the color barrier at the Metropolitan Opera, Black singers still face unique obstacles in building their careers within the industry. “We’ve made some strides, but not a whole lot,” said Naomi Andre, a professor at the University of Michigan and author of the book “Black Opera.” “I happen …

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Blanche Burton-Lyles, a concert pianist who was mentored by pioneering opera singer Marian Anderson, has died. She was 85. Burton-Lyles died of heart failure Monday at a rehabilitation center, according to Slater Funeral Home in Philadelphia. Burton-Lyles was born and raised in Philadelphia. She learned how to play classical piano at the age of 3. Burton-Lyles was …

Between 1952 and 1997, Studs Terkel invited some of the world’s best musicians to join him for his hour-long radio program on WFMT.

In 2009, composer Laura Karpman unveiled a new work, Ask Your Mama, during Carnegie Hall’s HONOR! Festival that celebrated African American music and culture. Inspired by Langston Hughes’s poem of the same name, Ask Your Mama is a multimedia exploration of the black experience. But Karpman herself is not black. “I’m a white composer, living in white privilege, setting the …