Donald Walbridge Shirley was born in Florida from Stella Gertrude (née Young, 1903-1936) and Edwin S. Shirley (1885-1982), immigrants from Jamaica to the United States. Kingston, Jamaica, is sometimes referred to as his place of birth, because of the promoters who falsely presented him native of Jamaica) 1. His father was Episcopal priest. Her mother, a teacher, died when Shirley was nine years old. Shirley had three brothers and a sister: Dr. Calvin Shirley (1921-2012), Dr. Edwin Shirley, Jr. (1922-2006), Stella Lucille Shirley (1924-1926) and Maurice Shirley (born 1937) 2. He also had a half-sister named Edwina Nalchawee (born about 1955).
In 1945, at the age of 18, he performed with Boston Pops 3, under the direction of Dean Dixon, in Tchaikovsky's B flat minor concerto.
A year later, Shirley performed one of her compositions with the London Philharmonic Orchestra3, invited by the Haitian government in 1949 to play at the Port-au-Prince International Bicentennial Exhibition, and at the request of the President. Esteemed and Bishop Le Goise for a new performance the following week.
Discouraged by the lack of opportunities for classical black musicians, the young Shirley abandons the pianist career for a time. He studied psychology and began working in Chicago as a psychologist. He then goes back to the music. He received a scholarship to study the relationship between music and juvenile delinquency, which was gaining momentum in the post-war period of the early 1950s. Playing in a small club, he experimented with different styles to determine how the audience reacts. The audience was unaware of their experiences and students were scrutinizing them to gauge their reactions.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Shirley recorded many albums for Cadence Records, experimenting jazz with a classical influence. His single "Water Boy" reached 40th place in the Billboard Hot 100 standings and stayed in this standings for 14 weeks. He performed in New York at Basin Street East, where Duke Ellington heard him, and from there began their friendship.
With the support of Arthur Fiedler, Shirley performed again with the Boston Pops in Chicago in June 1954. In 1955, he performed with the NBC Symphony Orchestra at the premiere of the Concerto for Piano. Ellington at Carnegie Hall. He also appears in the TV show Arthur Godfrey and his friends.
In the fall of 1968, Shirley performed Tchaikovsky's concerto with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He also works with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, and writes symphonies for the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has played as soloist with the opera orchestra of La Scala in Milan in a program devoted to the music of George Gershwin. Only two other pianists, Arthur Rubinstein and Sviatoslav Richter, performed as soloists. Shirley has written organ symphonies, piano concertos, cello concertos, three string quartets, one-act operas, works for organ, piano and violin, a symphonic poem based on James' novel Finnegans Wake. Joyce, and a set of "Variations" on the legend of Orpheus in the Underworld.
