{"id":257670,"date":"2026-08-02T12:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T12:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/257670\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T12:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T12:20:09","slug":"philadelphia-orch-mourns-its-first-black-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/257670\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Orch mourns its first black player"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>norman lebrecht<\/p>\n<p>August 02, 2026<\/p>\n<p>Message from the orchestra:<\/p>\n<p>It is with great sadness that The Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts has learned of the passing of former violinist Booker Rowe.<\/p>\n<p>In 1968, Booker made history as the first Black musician to play in the ensemble. After performing with the Orchestra as a substitute musician, Eugene Ormandy hired him for a full-time position in 1970, and he became a full-time member of the ensemble in 1971, the Orchestra\u2019s second Black musician. For almost 50 years, until his retirement in 2020, Booker was a well-loved member of the second violin section. He will be greatly missed; our sympathies go out to his family and friends.<\/p>\n<p>Booker obtained a Bachelor of Music degree from Temple University and a Masters from Yale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"norman lebrecht August 02, 2026 Message from the orchestra: It is with great sadness that The Philadelphia Orchestra&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-257670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}