Efrem Zimbalist violinist photo San Francisco 1930

Description

Original publicity photo for the legendary violinist Efrem Zimbalist
The back is stamped "Received Examiner Reference Library May 13 1930"
A small piece of paper is attached with the following print:
"Russian violinist, Zimbalist who plays here Tuesday night, on the ,000 fiddle."
This is from the San Francisco Examiner.
8 x 10 inches
Excellent condition
A rare photo
Priority Mail insured
I have been a professional violinist for 20 years.  I currently teach violin at University of California, Berkeley, and play Concertmaster for the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera.  I've been buying and selling music memorabilia on eBay since it was invented and I've been buying antique art from European and American auction houses for a decade.  All pieces for sale are guaranteed authentic and come from my personal collection, which numbers in the thousands.
Efrem Zimbalist Sr.
(21 April [
O.S.
9 April] 1889 – February 22, 1985) was a concert
violinist
,
composer
,
conductor
and director of the
Curtis Institute of Music
. Efrem Zimbalist, Sr., was born on April 9, 1888,
[5]
[6]
[7]
O. S., equivalent to April 21, 1889, in the Gregorian calendar, as reported in many newspaper obituaries, in the southwestern
Russian
city of
Rostov-on-Don
, the son of
Jewish
parents Maria (
née
Litvinoff) and Aron Zimbalist (Цимбалист, Russian pronunciation
[tsɪmbaˈlʲist]
), who was a conductor.
[8]
By the age of nine, Efrem Zimbalist was first violin in his father’s orchestra. At age 12 he entered the
Saint Petersburg Conservatory
and studied under
Leopold Auer
. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1907 after winning a gold medal and the Rubinstein Prize, and by age 21 was considered one of the world's greatest violinists.
After graduation he debuted in
Berlin
(playing the
Brahms Concerto
) and
London
in 1907 and in the United States in 1911, with the
Symphony Orchestra
. In 1912, he played the
Glazunov Concerto
in a concert marking
Leopold Stokowski
's first appearance with the
London Symphony Orchestra
. He then settled in the United States. He did much to popularize the performance of classical music in his adopted country. In 1917, he was elected as an honorary member of
Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia
, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha Chapter at the
New England Conservatory of Music
in
Boston
. He retired as a violinist in 1949, but returned in 1952 to give the first performance of the Violin Concerto by
Gian Carlo Menotti
, which is dedicated to him. He retired again in 1955. He served as a juror of the
International Tchaikovsky Competition
in 1962 and 1966.
Curtis Institute
In 1928, Zimbalist began teaching at the
Curtis Institute of Music
in
Philadelphia
. He was director of the from 1941 to 1968. His pupils included such distinguished musicians as Lynn Blakeslee
Aaron Rosand
,
[10]
Oscar Shumsky
,
Norman Carol
,
Joseph Silverstein
,
Jascha Brodsky
,
John Dalley
,
Michael Tree
,
Felix Slatkin
,
Shmuel Ashkenasi
,
Harold Wippler
,
Leonid Bolotine
, Takaoki Sugitani and Hidetaro Suzuki.
Compositions
His own compositions include a violin concerto, a piano concerto (1959), the
American Rhapsody
, a
tone poem
called
Daphnis and Chloe
, a Fantasy on themes from
The Golden Cockerel
by
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
, a Fantasy on Bizet's
Carmen
(1936) and a piece called
Sarasateana
, for viola and piano. He also wrote an
opera
,
Landara
, which premiered in 1956.
[11]
Public life
Pablo Casals
writes in his biography,
Joys and Sorrows
, that Zimbalist was a member of the 's Committee to Aid
Spanish Democracy
which Casals founded and chaired in 1936.
[12]
Personal life
Zimbalist married the famous American
soprano
Alma Gluck
and they toured together for a time. Alma Gluck died in 1938. In 1943, having been a widower for five years, he married the Curtis Institute of Music's founder,
Mary Louise Curtis Bok
,
[13]
daughter of publisher
Cyrus Curtis
and
Louisa Knapp Curtis
, and 14 years his senior.
Although he continued to consider himself ethnically Jewish, he found himself attracted, along with his wife Alma, to Anglican Christianity, and they regularly attended the Episcopal Church in New Hartford. Efrem Jr. and Maria were both christened there, and the couple placed Efrem in an Episcopal boarding school in New Hampshire. Efrem Jr. later became active in evangelical circles and was one of the founders of
Trinity Broadcasting Network
.
[14]
He died in 1985, at the age of 95. His and Alma's son,
Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
, and their granddaughter,
Stephanie Zimbalist
, both became popular actors.