William Warfield
William Caesar Warfield (January 22, 1920 – August 25, 2002) was an American concert bass-baritone singer and actor, known for his appearances in stage productions, Hollywood films, and television programs. A prominent African American artist during the Civil Rights era, he worked with many notable artists, represented the United States during foreign tours, taught at academic institutions, and earned numerous accolades, including a Grammy Award in 1984.
William Warfield
August 25, 2002 (aged 82)
Eastman School of Music (B.M. 1942, M.M. 1946)
- singer
- actor
- professor
Biography[edit]
Early life and career[edit]
Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas, the oldest of five sons of a Baptist minister.[1] He grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was the pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. In 1938, as a senior at Washington High School in Rochester, he won the Music Educators National Song Competition in St. Louis and expressed an interest in pursuing a career on the concert stage.[2] Inducted into the U.S. Army in November 1942 during World War II, Warfield, a senior at the Eastman School of Music, presented his graduation recital before an overflow audience at Kilbourn Hall, Eastman Theater on November 18. He attended his graduation ceremony the following May in military uniform.[3] After earning his bachelor's degree in 1942 and serving in the military, he returned to the Eastman School to complete a master's degree in 1946.[4]
According to a recent exhibit about WWII, Warfield was one of less than one hundred African American members of the Ritchie Boys, thousands of soldiers who were trained at Fort Ritchie, Maryland. It was an intelligence center where hundreds of Jewish recruits who fled Nazi Germany for the United States were trained to interrogate their one-time countrymen. According to the exhibit at the Zekelman Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Warfield was brought to the camp because of his strong German skills which he perfected while studying music. Because of segregation, his skills were never put to use.
According to Warfield, upon induction into the Army he was initially assigned to the ordnance department to be a truck driver, but after he objected, citing his language skills, he was assigned to Ft. Ritchie, where he was in charge of stage shows and spoke fluently with German, Italian and French soldiers in their native languages.[5]
He was discharged from the Army, where he had served in military intelligence, in 1946. Later that year he was cast in the road show tour of Call Me Mister. According to Warfield, that road show cast included William Marshall, Carl Reiner, Buddy Hackett and Bob Fosse. Over the next three years he also appeared in "Set My People Free" and the opera Regina, while also studying with Yves Tinayre and Otto Herz of the veteran's training program of the American Theatre Wing.[6][5]
He gave his recital debut in New York's Town Hall on March 19, 1950. He was quickly invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to tour Australia and give 35 concerts. In 1952, Warfield performed in Porgy and Bess during a tour of Europe sponsored by the U.S. State Department (he made six separate tours for the US Department of State, more than any other American solo artist). In this production, he played opposite the opera star Leontyne Price, whom he soon married, but the demands of two separate careers left them little time together. They divorced in 1972, but were featured together in a 1963 studio recording of excerpts from Porgy and Bess.
In 1969 he participated in an oratorio in Riverside Park with youth from the New York All-City High School Chorus as a public service. His dear friend and colleague Marian Anderson invited the youth to her home in Connecticut afterwards. Warfield accompanied the youth; it was the same weekend as the Woodstock Festival that some of the youth’s friends went to instead.
In 1975 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He later became Chairman of the Voice Department. In 1994, he moved to Northwestern University's School of Music, where he stayed until his death.
Membership of organizations[edit]
Warfield was active in many organizations, after appearing as the featured artist at the 50th year convention of the National Association of Negro Musicians [2], he became active with the organization, serving as its president for two terms. He later served on the boards of the [3] NANM and the Schiller Institute. After joining the Schiller Institute in 1996, he began to collaborate with acclaimed vocal coach Sylvia Olden Lee in a project to save the performance tradition of the Negro spiritual.[10] During the final years of his life, from 1999 to 2002, he performed regularly at Schiller Institute biannual conferences, often with Olden Lee as his accompanist, and the two of them traveled the country conducting singing workshops for members of the LaRouche Youth Movement.[11] Warfield was made an honorary member of the Delta Lambda chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at Ball State University in 1961, and awarded the Fraternity's Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award in 1976 at its national convention in Evansville, Indiana.
Legacy[edit]
The William Warfield Scholarship Fund was formed in 1977 to support young African American classical singers at the Eastman School of Music. His nephew, Thomas Warfield, has presided over the fund. Recipients include Claron McFadden and Nicole Cabell.[12]