Meet Jeri Lynne Johnson
Jeri Lynne Johnson is a conductor, composer, and cultural entrepreneur whose visionary artistry is reshaping the orchestral landscape. Acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as “a stunning, rhythmically vital conductor,” she is known for performances that are both masterfully precise and deeply communicative, and for curating programs that use music to encourage greater agency in society and to expand the very definition of what orchestral music can be.
Jeri’s career is marked by a series of historic firsts. In 2005, she became the first African American woman to win an international conducting prize, receiving the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship. Since then, she has led many of the world’s leading orchestras, opera and ballet companies—including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, and Dance Theatre of Harlem—often as the first African American woman to take the podium. Her repertoire traverses centuries and genres: she has premiered operatic and orchestral works by MacArthur Fellow composers and conducted groundbreaking collaborations with Jay-Z, Solange Knowles, and The Roots. In 2022, she conducted Tania León’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Stride at the Kennedy Center Honors in tribute to the composer.
In 2008, Jeri founded the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra as a model for a 21st-century orchestra—one that embodies modern democratic values. Black Pearl has earned national recognition for both artistic excellence and social impact, receiving eleven National Endowment for the Arts grants and becoming the only organization in the country to win three Knight Foundation Arts Challenge grants. In 2021, Black Pearl was selected to represent North America as part of a global collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma for the World Economic Forum’s See Me! A Global Concert. Her current creative project with Black Pearl is curating a new recording project inspired by Paul Freeman’s Black Composers Series, reimagining the classical canon to highlight the neglected contributions of Black women composers.
Through her artistry, leadership, and advocacy, Jeri Lynne Johnson is redefining what it means to be a conductor in the 21st century—fusing musical excellence with cultural innovation and making the orchestral stage a site of inclusion, imagination, and transformation.