Some of our favorite music, came out of backgrounds that were tough, backgrounds that were challenging from people who didn't have resources.

Imagine if we didn't have that music.

In classical music.

Sometimes things are a little bit, pretentious.

It's not just Chopin, it's not just Beethoven, but it's- it's everything that is around us.

I think the representation especially in orchestras still has a long way to go.

My dad is a jazz guitarist and composer, A. Spencer Barefield, from the time I was a little girl, I was listening to my dad.

I was going to rehearsals.

I took a liking as a toddler to this one bassist Richard Davis, who's just legendary.

So my parents asked me when I was two, Jannina, would you like to play an instrument and I said, Well, I want to play the bass like Richard Davis.

I think they'd already decided that I was going to play the violin, so they lied to me, and they said that they were going to get me a little bass, which turned out to be this.

And it stuck.

I did start fairly late on the instrument.

I remember as a kid listening to Jacqueline du Pre's recordings and just sitting down with the instrument, being a new cellist at 12 years old and just saying, I want to make that sound and I'm not going to get up from this chair until I make something that sounds something like her.

When I was four years old watching Sesame Street, I saw Itzhak Perlman playing the violin on an episode, and I just fell in love with the way his chin fit in here perfectly in the chin rest.

So when the show went off, I asked my mom if I could start playing the violin.

And she did not say yes, but she also didn't say no.

So I begged for two years.

And finally, when I was six, I got a violin, so I got to start playing.

It's not a straight line to have a career in music and it's not a direct path.

And along that path, you need some cheerleading, you need resources, you need guidance.

Since 1997, the Sphinx Organization has empowered young Black and Latinx musicians to pursue meaningful careers in the classical world.

I grew up in Lansing, Michigan, which is just an hour and a half outside of Detroit, the home base of Sphinx.

When my teachers received the announcement that this competition was beginning for black and Latino string players, they were thrilled and I competed in the inaugural competition and I won first prize in the Junior Division in 2001.

I was a semifinalist in the very first Sphinx competition and I've been involved with them ever since.

I was pretty nervous.

You know, I'd never really competed in a major competition at that point.

2016 Senior Winner, Thomas Mesa, performing with the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra.mxf I had not seen as many people who looked like me in the industry prior to the very first Sphinx competition.

So it was exciting.

But it also really highlighted just how much I was oftentimes the only black person in the room as I was studying music.

The finals are with an all black and Latinx orchestra brought of professional musicians that are brought in so like as a young player to be able to go and compete in this competition and then in the finals, actually be able to play with this incredible orchestra.

BALLADE.mxf (featuring Jannina, Thomas and Melissa in Sphinx Orchestra 2019 I played in the orchestra many times, and every time I'm like crying.

I think students now can see multiple paths to success as an artist and there are lots of people cheerleading them on, myself and the entire La Familia included.

La Familia, the family.

There's just a sort of tight knit feeling in a Latin family, in my own particular experience growing up in Miami, Florida.

The fact that that term exists in the Sphinx organization is a testament to how close people get through all of these different branches that they have created for their artists.

Sphinx Performance Academy,-a program for pre-college, Black and Latinx string players.

They get to do chamber music every day.

They get coaching, every day, they get lessons every other day.

It's an intensive experience for them.

They're so often coming from music programs where they're the only person of color and they just go through a transformation because they feel like they belong.

And for me, I've just learned the power of being able to see yourself in a career, and the power of belonging through this program.

Growing up I had magnificent mentors.

A couple of them are minorities, and many of them are not and being able to learn different aspects of the industry from different walks through it was very helpfu.

And so now to be able to be a mentor, to be in a position, to be able to offer that help to young people, selfishly, that's what inspires me.

They see these faculty members who are amazing musicians, now having incredible careers and they can see themselves in their shoes.

When you're on tour, when you're traveling, it's such an opportunity to do some outreach for some of these communities that might not be exposed to classical music.

We would play like a three minute piece and they would just be yelling like it was like a rock concert.

Those are the kinds of experiences that you know, while it's great to play at Carnegie Hall, those are the things that you're like, Oh, this is just as or more important than what we're doing on the big stages.

It was a really powerful experience, both being in that ensemble with the people who were in and also playing music by Black and Latino composers.

A lot of which I never performed before didn't know about and never would have performed it in schools.

During the lockdown, there's a three month period where everything stopped, and I wanted to give composers an outlet.

I commissioned a piece by a good friend of mine, Andrea Casarrubios, and so Andrea wrote this piece for solo cello called Seven, which is in the program Tracing Visions that Sphinx Virtuosi are traveling the country presenting.

The name Seven comes from the time that everyone around the country would go to their windows, go to their balconies and they would clap for those who were courageously serving the communities.

The fact that that happened from nothing and out of a time that was so hard for everybody.

It felt really rewarding.

Musicians gain their inspiration from all over the world.

By working to promote diversity and working to get more people in the room, making music and creating these ideas that are happening simply helps the creativity to flourish.

Creating a platform for every single aspect of our culture to come together on a concert stage is one of the greatest things that I've been a part of.

The artists that are coming out of Sphinx are top level, but also very interesting artists who have a lot to say.

So I think it's really becoming a model for many organizations on how they need to move the future forward.

To be able to open doors for hopefully more musicians to come through and even greater and do bigger things than I've ever done, that's the best feeling.