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Ortiz Montaigne Walton, the first African-American member of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and a prominent figure in African-American studies, was a native of Chicago, Illinois. He studied music at Tanglewood, Hartt and New York's Mannes School. He performed for three years with Connecticut symphony orchestras in Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport before coming to Buffalo, New York.
He was named assistant principal contrabassist of the Buffalo Philharmonic in 1954 and performed with the orchestra for three seasons. He moved on to become not only the first African-American but the youngest member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Walton later was principal contrabassist with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in Egypt and performed a number of acclaimed solo recitals in New York's Carnegie Hall, Chicago and San Francisco. He recorded classical works for the bass violin with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of London and in Paris.
Mr. Walton returned to Chicago and worked for social service agencies after leaving the Cairo Symphony in 1965. He earned a bachelor's degree in psychology at Roosevelt University in Chicago and master's and doctoral degrees in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he fought to establish the ethnic studies department and taught Afro-American studies. He also taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
"Ortiz was a genius and a person who had different degrees of and a wide variety of interests and was both an accomplished musician and a scholar," said Ishmael Reed, also a Berkeley faculty member and a longtime friend of Mr. Walton.
He wrote several books on music, notably, "Music: Black, White and Blue," hailed as a groundbreaking assessment of African-American music, and was regarded as a leading figure in establishing the importance of African-American culture. Also a champion of Duke Ellington, he wrote "Coronation of the King: Contributions by Duke Ellington to Black Culture."
Mr. Walton was married to the former Carol Kara Dozier for 53 years. They have a son, Omar.
Mr. Walton died on July 29, 2010 in his home in Berkeley, California, after a long illness. He was 76 years old.