Want to find a great teacher? It is not as easy as you think. But here are some rules that can make the process easier and more successful.
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Why are some musical luminaries remembered for generations, even centuries, while the names of others are forgotten less than a generation after their deaths?
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Today we associate the word “unprecedented” with the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on the classical music business. But is it really unprecedented? Here I talk about how we might look at history for some clues.
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If one really wants to understand how the music business developed in the second half of the twentieth century, there is no better musical family to study that the Gomberg/Zazofsky clan. Their story and our family’s relationship to theirs provides a behind-the-scenes look that no history book can provide.
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On July 12, 2020, the music world lost an icon, Eleanor Sokoloff, at the age of 106. Mrs. Sokoloff taught piano at the Curtis Institute of Music for over 80 years with countless students who went on to international careers. She and her husband Vladimir met there as students, and spent their entire professional lives at Curtis. This special blog post includes more about this remarkable lady.
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The union movement in America would have a profound impact on the music business. Unionization was a divisive issue in the music industry affecting relationships between friends, colleagues, and families…including ours.
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Ever thought of creating a playlist of favorite classical music recordings? I have been doing so over the last few months in conjunction with a new book I am writing and I am learning a lot.
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My Uncle Boris Goldovsky’s favorite opera was Mozart’s Don Giovanni and there was nothing more fun for me than playing first flute in his touring opera orchestra night after night, especially when he was on the podium conducting. I was 25 years old the first time I had occasion to so do.
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In 1959, my uncle Boris Goldovsky finally wrote down a story he had been telling at family gatherings for years. At the time, it would not have been politic to publish it so he issued a very limited edition of only eight copies for family members.
Now for the first time, this wonderful story can be shared more widely.
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For my family, there was a lot to learn about musical careers once they came to reside in the United States. Chief among the lessons to be mastered was the extent to which in America, music was a business.
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My grandmother, Lea Luboshutz, joined the violin faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1928. Her track record as a pedagogue was impressive based on the careers of almost 150 of her students. Much of this success probably was due to her teaching philosophy and her approach.
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For my grandmother, Lea Luboshutz, family was as important as music. But sometimes, her son-in-law, Billy Wolf strained her tolerance for novelty and humor.
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For an amateur musician, my father’s opportunities to play with great musicians were extraordinary thanks to his mother-in-law, Lea Luboshutz. One musician he never collaborated with was Leonard Bernstein…but he came ever so close.
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The story of how my father, a rank amateur, finagled an abbreviated performance with the great violinist, Jascha Heifetz, is one that Lea preferred to forget. Yet, somehow, it got into the press, to her eternal mortification.
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The father of Lea’s children was Onissim Goldovsky. As I learned late in my own life, Onissim never married Lea. Indeed, during their whole time together he was married to someone else. Who was this mystery rival? I was to learn that she too was quite a remarkable woman.
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The phantom of the opera knows all the nooks and crannies he used to inhabit. But what happens to his ability to roam the halls after a major renovation?
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For a long time, I thought my grandmother’s various superstitions were an anomaly. Then the acclaimed Soviet violinist, David Oistrakh, came to town and I realized they shared something more than great violin playing.
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My grandmother was a firm believer that young musicians should have proven talent at an extremely high level before she would recommend them as students for the Curtis Institute of Music. Then she met the granddaughter of her teacher Eugene Ysaÿe and all bets were off.
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I always thought it odd that my grandmother, a famous violinist, loved monkeys. In the various places she lived, there were no native habitats for monkeys and she must have been an adult before she saw a live one. But in her homes, there were always paintings, prints, photographs, toys, carvings, statues — you name it — monkeys everywhere. And it was certainly not an animal I associated with music.
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