In the 1980s, when Jens Nygaard was invited to spend a month as guest conductor of the Capetown Symphony Orchestra, friends warned him that if he accepted, he would be condoning apartheid. He went anyway, and shocked Capetown by spending his entire conducting fee on concert tickets and bus fares so that people from the Black townships could attend his concerts. When he left, Nygaard bought symphony season tickets for all the black employees of his hotel and the symphony itself. Capetown's symphony audience and musicians' union stayed integrated as a result of Nygaard's efforts.

No stranger to poverty and hardship, Nygaard became ill when he was a student at Julliard, and spent three months in a hospital. He was then homeless off and on for two years, living in a park near Lincoln Center before moving into a $46-a-month Harlem walk-up. Through it all, he kept making music, organizing a chamber music series that established him as an innovative programmer. He earned an average of $40 a week for many years; the Arkansas native was called an "idealistic hillbilly" by New York's music establishment.

Nygaard then staked everything on conducting a single concert, borrowing money to cover costs, and inviting influential critics to attend. It worked—the reviews were excellent and Nygaard used them to get a foundation grant that allowed him to create the critically acclaimed Jupiter Symphony. He had the Jupiter playing obscure, little-known music and one third of Jupiter's concerts were performed for the blind, mentally ill, or the homeless. Nygaard himself buys hundreds of tickets and gives them to those who can't afford even the Jupiter's low prices.

Update: Jens Nygaard died in 2001. He was 69.