Violinist and Social Entrepreneur Aaron Dworkin

Aaron Dworkin is a man of many talents: he’s a violinist, social entrepreneur, professor, author, MacArthur Fellow and member of the National Council on the Arts. In this time of a long overdue racial reckoning, many organizations are answering the challenge to interrogate how their own systems address diversity and inclusion. Aaron Dworkin is singularly positioned to speak to this moment: he has been shining a light and doing the work around inequity for decades.   A violinist from early childhood, Dworkin was an undergraduate when he grappled with the implications of the dearth of African-American and Latinx musicians in orchestras as well as  the lack of music by people of color in the repertoire of those same orchestras. Aaron Dworkin got to work and in 1997 founded the Sphinx Organization-- its goal was to address the underrepresentation of people of color in classical music on every level: on the stage, in the repertory, behind the stage, in the front office, and in the audience.  Beginning as a competition for African-American and Latinx string instrumentalists, Sphinx has grown into a force in classical music with its own symphony orchestra, and robust programming that reaches over 100,000 students and artists annually.  In this podcast, Aaron talks about diversity and classical music—what can be addressed immediately and what requires a complex and far-reaching overhaul. We also talk about his own very interesting biography and how it informed his love of music, the centrality of entrepreneurship to the arts today (he wrote a book called The Entrepreneurial Artist), and his public television show Arts Engines in which he talks to arts’ administrators from around the country.  It’s a great conversation with someone whose passion and conviction are matched by his humor.