Hear Nebraska

by Chance Solem-Pfeifer | photo by Chloe Ekberg As generous and humble with his life story as Thomas Wilkins is, there are moments when you might forget the circles in which the maestro travels. About an hour into our interview, I asked the Omaha Symphony director how often he thinks about the racial component of the accolades that have seen him featured in the LA Times and Boston Globe. Rarely, he says. But that being a black man at the highest echelon of a white-dominated industry is something he’s repeatedly discussed with a good friend named Branford Marsalis. Then Thomas excuses himself from the room for the moment. When he returns, he offers a courteous smile. “Where were we?” “You were talking about your friend Branford Marsalis.” Wilkins is the sort of person who, as he puts it, when he wants a bologna sandwich, he wants a bologna sandwich. But as an artist, he’s accrued the level of national and international notoriety that lead to polite debates with Marsalis about the state of racial equity i