JASCHA BRODSKY Biography - Musicians

 
 

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JASCHA BRODSKY

Name: Jascha Brodsky                                                               
Born: 6 June 1907                                                                   
Died: 3 March 1997                                                                 
                                                                                   
Jascha Brodsky (June 6, 1907 - March 3, 1997) was a Ukrainian-American violinist   
and teacher.                                                                       
                                                                                   
Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, he began his violin studies with his violinist father     
at the age of six. He later studied at the conservatory in Tbilisi, Georgia, and   
by 1926, was performing successfully all over the Soviet Union. That same year,     
he went to Paris to study with Lucien Capet. There he also played for Sergei       
Prokofiev and performed with pianist Vladimir Horowitz and violinists Nathan       
Milstein and Mischa Elman.                                                         
                                                                                   
Soon thereafter, he moved again, to Belgium to study with the legendary Eugene     
Ysaÿe.                                                                             
                                                                                   
In 1930 he moved to America to study with Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis             
Institute of Music, where he and three other students formed an ensemble which     
would later be called the Curtis String Quartet. He served as the first             
violinist of the quartet until group disbanded in 1981 after the death of the       
quartet's violist, Max Aronoff.                                                     
                                                                                   
Brodsky was hired as a faculty member of the Curtis Institute in 1932, and later   
was appointed to the Efrem Zimbalist Chair of Violin Studies, which he held         
until his death in 1997. A respected pedagogue, his students are dispersed         
widely among the finest musical institutions in the world. Any given year there     
are about a dozen Brodsky students playing in the Philadelphia Orchestra.           
Numbered among his students are Hilary Hahn, Joseph de Pasquale, Leila             
Josefowicz, Joey Corpus, Juliette Kang, Judith Ingolfsson, Herbert Greenberg,       
and Chin Kim.                                                                       
                                                                                   
With Aronoff, Brodsky founded the New School of Music in Philadelphia when they     
decided that there was a present need to train musicians specifically for a         
career in chamber music or in orchestra. In 1986, The New School of Music was       
merged into Temple University's Boyer College of Music and Dance, where Brodsky     
was appointed Professor Emeritus. He taught at the school until his retirement     
in 1996.                                                                           
                                                                                   
He died in Ocala, Florida.