Act I

Veronica Tyler’s musical beginnings can be traced back to her mother, a prolific church organist, who ensured that all her children learned music.

While the whole family was musical, Tyler's daughter, Adriane, says that it was clear her mother's talent was always "something special"; something "innate". She recalls family members saying Tyler "just had it"- an indescribable exceptionality.

During her time at Frederick Douglass High School, Veronica Tyler began developing her musical career into a professional one. After high school, Tyler attended the Peabody Conservatory, where she was one of the first Black students and, as her granddaughter, Kimber, recalls, the first to sing at commencement. It was after this event that she was approached with an offer to attend the Julliard School in New York. From Julliard, Veronica Tyler made her New York debut in 1961 with the American Opera Society.

Throughout her career, Tyler would face discrimination and struggle. Though the Peabody Conservatory officially allowed the admission of Black students in 1949, it would be a decade before Tyler and her fellow student, Junnetta Jones, would attend. However, the Conservatory enforced unofficial segregationist policies during Tyler’s time, which manifested in many ways. Sometimes it was Tyler and Jones being made to eat lunch separately from the rest of the student body and other times it was an overt denial of resources, knowledge, and opportunity.

Later in her career, Tyler traveled to the Soviet Union for the first Tchaikovsky International Vocal Competition, held in 1966. In the accompanying photo, she is pictured with the Gold Medalist, Jane Marsh. Despite achieving scores that would have placed Tyler very highly in the competition, she was awarded the Silver Medal. Tyler's daughter, Adriane, recalls that later, she would recount to her family another version of the story, where she was told explicitly by a competition official that she would have won the Gold Medal but a Black woman could not win the gold medal. 

But as her family stresses, Tyler's experiences, both good and bad, are what shaped her career and life. Eventually, these things are what solidified Tyler's commitment to working with young musicians of color and to "get people to look past race" and just see "the music, the singer."

Veronica Tyler's time in New York City marked an important era in her life. Many of Tyler's most memorable and important performances came from the New York stages. She performed with several opera companies such as The New York City Opera and the New York City Center Light Opera Company.

Throughout Tyler’s career, she would consider her work in the Young People’s Concerts to be some of her most impactful work. She saw these concerts as ways to bring music to the children, introducing them to new songs and encouraging them to become musicians themselves. It was also the place where she met Leonard Bernstein, who introduced her on several of the concerts. A momentous occasion for any young, up and coming, musician, but especially so for a young, Black musician. A short clip from one of these concerts is included below, with an introduction of Veronica Tyler given by Leonard Bernstein.

Bernstein, L. (2018). Young People’s Concert: “Young Performers No. 2” / Bernstein · New York Philharmonic. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USZtnQUr7Oc

Other performances of note were in Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Handel’s Ariodante. The Magic Flute was a New York production with the New York City Opera under the direction of Julius Rudel, while Ariodante was performed at the Kennedy Center in 1971. Veronica Tyler played the role of Pamina, opposite Beverly Sills as the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute. In Ariodante, Veronica Tyler performed as Delinda, a photograph of her in costume is included below.