Celebrating Black History: Blanche Burton-Lyles (Piano '54)

Award-winning concert pianist and music educator Blanche Henrietta Burton-Lyles (’54), protégé of opera legend Marian Anderson, became the first Black female pianist to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music and the first African American woman to perform at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic in November of 1947 at age 14, having won the Young Audiences Competition. Born on March 2, 1933, in Philadelphia to Anthony and Anna Blanche Burton, she was considered a child prodigy and was admitted to Curtis at age eleven in 1944, where she studied with celebrated Russian American pianist, Isabelle Vengerova. That year, she also played with the first African American symphony orchestra, the Philadelphia Concert Orchestra at Scottish Rite Temple.

Ms. Burton-Lyles’s father sang in the choir’s bass section at Union Baptist Church, one of the city’s oldest African American Baptist congregations. There, the young girl met Ms. Anderson, who encouraged her to pursue a career as a classical musician and would often invite her to entertain guests at her home following performances in Philadelphia. A concert career followed her studies at Curtis, with a performance at Yale University with the New Haven Symphony and subsequent recitals in England, Spain, and the United States throughout the 1950s and ’60s. During this time, she also spent fifteen years accompanying the Leroy Bostic and the Mellow Aires ensemble.

In the early 1960s, Ms. Burton-Lyles joined the Philadelphia Board of Education as a teacher and continued her academic studies at Temple University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in music education in 1971. She retired from teaching in 1993 and became the founder and president of the Marian Anderson Historical Society, Inc., acquiring the historical residences of the late celebrated contralto in 1998 and her birthplace in 2000. She made it her life’s mission to preserve Ms. Anderson’s legacy, cherished memorabilia, books, rare photos, and paintings. Today, the Marian Anderson Residence Museum has become a fixture in the Philadelphia community and supports young artists, classical and opera singers, instrumentalists, visual artists, and more with local performances and events that the society sponsors.

Ms. Burton-Lyles was the recipient of many awards and humanitarian honors in her lifetime, including the Shirley Chisholm Philadelphia Political Congress of Black Women Award for Achievement in Music in 1994 and the National Black Music Caucus Award for Outstanding Women in Music in 1995. In addition, for her tireless efforts to preserve Marian Anderson’s legacy, she received the Mary McLeod Bethune Award from the National Council of Negro Women in 2000 and the 2005 Sadie T. Alexander Award from the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. In 2004, she was honored with the Philadelphia 76ers’s Community Service All-Star Award. She also received the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.’s Edythe Ingram Award in 2006, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Drum Major Cultural Award in 2007, and the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Unsung Hero Award at Carnegie Hall that same year.

Blanche Burton-Lyles passed away on November 20, 2018, at age 85.

Photos taken from the Curtis Archives and Special Collections. Please visit Curtis Institute of Music Open Archives and Recitals (CIMOAR). Learn more about Curtis’s library and archives HERE.

Watch numerous interviews with Ms. Burton-Lyles at The History Makers HERE.

Read a tribute to Ms. Burton-Lyles in The New York Times HERE.

Photo Credits: 1. & 2.) National Marian Anderson Museum and The History Makers. 3.) Blanche Burton-Lyles and the piano studio of Isabelle Vengerova; Curtis Archives and Special Collections. 4.) Ms. Burton-Lyles and Curtis’s graduating class of 1954; Curtis Archives and Special Collections. 5. & 6.)  Ms. Burton-Lyles before recitals at the Curtis Institute of Music; National Marian Anderson Museum and The History Makers. 7.) Ms. Burton-Lyles in an undated photo; National Marian Anderson Museum.