As Tahirah Whittington, the cellist of all-Black Chicago string quartet D-Composed, flew through a piece by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, her young audience stared in awe. The performance was part of...

According to a 2014 study by the League of American Orchestras, less than 2 percent of musicians in the approximately 800 orchestras surveyed were Black. The lack of Black representation in classical music...