Curtis Institute rejection — Philadelphia

The Curtis Institute of Music at 1726 Locust Street in Philadelphia is one of the most selective music schools in the world — a conservatory that accepts fewer than five percent of applicants and has produced an extraordinary proportion of the classical music world's leading performers. In 1951, Eunice Kathleen Waymon — who would become Nina Simone — auditioned for a place and was rejected. She was seventeen years old, a prodigiously gifted pianist from the small town of Tryon, North Carolina, who had been studying piano since childhood, supported by a community fundraising campaign that had paid for her lessons and education.

Simone believed the rejection was racially motivated. She never stopped believing it. She had prepared her entire life for a classical career — her ambition, as explicitly stated, was to become the first Black classical concert pianist — and the Curtis rejection foreclosed that path. She moved to Philadelphia, began giving piano lessons and performing in bars and clubs to support herself, and started singing to draw larger audiences. The singing was initially a concession to commercial necessity; it became the instrument that made her famous. She adopted the stage name Nina Simone to prevent her family's Baptist congregation from knowing she was playing in bars.

The Curtis Institute acknowledged in 2003 — more than fifty years after the audition — that race had likely been a factor in her rejection. She died that year, in April 2003, without formally reconciling with the institution. Whether the rejection made her what she became or merely redirected a talent that would have found its expression regardless is unknowable. What is certain is that the building on Locust Street is where her intended life ended and her actual one began.