THE MAESTRO SERIES: A chat with conductor, scholar and author Dr. Rufus Jones

Across the Arts with Patrick D. McCoy

Charles Dean Dixon, conductor, was born January 10, 1915 in New York, New York to West Indian parents Henry Charles Dixon and McClara Rolston Dixon. Dixon’s parents exposed him to classical music at an early age and his mother taught him to play the violin, along with a number of other instruments. By the age of nine he was considered a musical prodigy and performed on local radio stations in New York. Dixon enrolled at Juilliard School of Music in 1932 as a violin major, but soon switched to the music pedagogy program and graduated in 1936. He then enrolled in Columbia University and earned a Master’s Degree in Music Pedagogy there in 1939. While at Julliard Dixon discovered conducting and upon graduating he formed the “Dean Dixon Symphony Orchestra,” the first racially integrated group of its type in New York City. Dixon finally returned to the United States in 1970 after his hugely successful career in Europe and Australia.