Roland Hayes

At 89 years old, Roland Hayes physical status not available right now. We will update Roland Hayes's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

In January 1915 Hayes premiered in Manhattan, New York City in concerts presented by orchestra leader Walter F. Craig. Hayes performed his own musical arrangements in recitals from 1916 to 1919, touring from coast to coast. For his first recital he was unable to find a sponsor so he used 200 dollars of his own money to rent Jordan Hall for his classical recital. To earn money he went on a tour of black churches and colleges in the South. In 1917 he announced his second concert, which would be held in Boston's Symphony Hall. On November 15, 1917, every seat in the hall was sold and Hayes's concert was a success both musically and financially, but the music industry was still not considering him a top classical performer. He sang at Walter Craig's Pre-Lenten Recitals and several Carnegie Hall concerts. He performed with the Philadelphia Concert Orchestra, and at the Atlanta Colored Music Festivals and at the Washington Conservatory concerts. In 1917, he toured with the Hayes Trio, which he formed with baritone William Richardson (singer) and pianist William Lawrence (pianist).

In April 1920, Hayes traveled to Europe. He began lessons with Sir George Henschel, who was the first conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and gave his first recital in London's Aeolian Hall in May 1920 with pianist Lawrence Brown as his accompanist. Soon Hayes was singing in capital cities across Europe and was quite famous. Almost a year after his arrival in Europe, Hayes had a concert at London's Wigmore Hall. The next day, he received a summons from King George V and Queen Mary to give a command performance at Buckingham Palace. He returned to the United States of America in 1923. He made his official debut on November 16, 1923, in Boston's Symphony Hall singing Berlioz, Mozart, and spirituals, conducted by Pierre Monteux, which received critical acclaim. He was the first African-American soloist to appear with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1924.

Late career

Hayes finally secured professional management with the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Company. He was reportedly making $100,000 a year at this point in his career. In Boston he also worked as a voice teacher. One of his pupils was the Canadian soprano Frances James. He published musical scores for a collection of spirituals in 1948 as My Songs: Aframerican Religious Folk Songs Arranged and Interpreted.

In 1925, Hayes had an affair with a married Czech aristocrat, Bertha Henriette Katharina Nadine, Gräfin von Colloredo-Mansfeld (June 21, 1890 in Týnec – January 29, 1982 in Auch), which resulted in a pregnancy. Bertha had been married in Vienna since 10 August 1909 to a member of a German princely family, Hieronymus von Colloredo (November 3, 1870 in Dobříš – August 29, 1942 in Prague), who was 20 years her senior. He refused to allow the expected child to bear his name or to be raised along with the couple's four older children, quietly managing to obtain a divorce in Prague on 8 January 1926, while Bertha left their home in Zbiroh, Czechoslovakia, to bear Hayes's child in Basel, Switzerland. Hayes offered to adopt the child, while the countess sought to resume the couple's relationship, while concealing it, until the late 1920s. Their daughter, Maya Kolowrat, would marry Russian émigré Yuri Mikhailovich Bogdanoff (January 28, 1928 in Leningrad – 2012), son of Mikhail Borisovich Bogdanov and wife Anna Osten-Sacken and paternal grandson of Boris Alexandrovich Bogdanov, shot in 1917, and wife. Maya later gave birth in Saint-Lary, Gers, to twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff in 1949, who later attributed their early interest in the sciences to their unhampered childhood access to their maternal grandmother's castle library.

After the 1930s, Hayes stopped touring in Europe because the change in politics and the rise of the Nazi Party made it unfavourable to African Americans.

In 1932, while in Los Angeles, for a Hollywood Bowl performance, he married Helen Alzada Mann (1893–1988). The new Mrs. Hayes was born in Chattanooga and graduated from what is now Tennessee State University. One year later they had a daughter, Afrika Hayes. The family moved into a home in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Hayes did not perform very much from the 1940s to the 1970s, but continued yearly concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York and performances at Fisk and other colleges. In 1966, he was awarded the degree of Honorary Doctorate of Music from The Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford. Hayes continued to perform until the age of 85, when he gave his last concert at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge. He was able to purchase the land in Georgia on which he had grown up as a child.

He died on January 1, 1977, five years after his final concert.

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