leaderboard1 -

Nunc Dimittis

June 9, 2003
Default

Samuel Baron, flute performer and teacher on the faculty at Yale, Mannes, Juilliard, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and director of the Bach Aria Festival and Institute, died on May 16, 1997. He was born in Brooklyn and studied violin first, later switching to flute. He attended Juilliard and after graduation reapplied as a conducting major. He became conductor of the New York Brass Ensemble with whom he made a highly acclaimed recording of music by Gabrieli. In 1948 he became a member of the New York Wind Quintet, and played first flute for the 1952 season of the Minneapolis Symphony. In 1965 he joined the Bach Aria Group. In 1980 he became its director and located it at the Stony Brook campus. It was here that I met him and his wonderful wife Carol, when we installed a copy of a Silbermann organ in the school's recital hall. The first performance on the new organ, Wednesday, June 27, 1984, featured Joan Lippincott in a solo performance of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in F, and a Sinfonia for organ and the Bach Aria Festival under Mr. Baron's direction.

--George Bozeman, Jr.

Florence Scholl Cushman died February 26, 1997 at the age of 103. She left a career as a concert pianist in Chicago to teach generations of youngsters in rural Randolph, VT. Her career as a Vermont piano teacher began when she was nearly 60--and lasted almost 40 years, continuing to take students well past the age of 100. She was born Florence Wilhelmina Paulina Scholl in Joliet, Illinois on June 22, 1893. She was educated in Joliet schools and began piano lessons at age eight. At the age of 11 she began traveling alone to Chicago for lessons from world-famous organist Wilhelm Middleschulte. Later she added piano lessons with Glenn Dillard Gunn and then with Swiss pianist Rudolf Ganz. Her last teacher was Moriz Rosenthal. She entered the Chicago Music School, studying with Percy Grainger and Louis Victor Sarr. At the age of 20 she made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, playing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto. She married Dr. Charles Cushman in 1948 and moved to Vermont, where she taught piano students six days a week, maintaining some students until 1995, when she was 102. Mrs. Cushman was a member of Bethany United Church of Christ, where she served as organist for a short time.

Donald Joyce died March 10 of cancer at the age of 45. In addition to degrees from the Juilliard School, he held the Premier Prix de Virtuosité (with Distinction) from the Geneva Conservatory where he worked with Lionel Rogg. During the Bach tercentenary year (1985) he performed the complete Bach organ works in 13 recitals, and was scheduled to repeat this series at the Lincoln Center this summer. Many performances and two CDs grew out of his interest in Iberian and Mexican organ music; at the time of his death he was writing a monograph on historic Mexican organs. He served as Music Director and Organist at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Chelsea, organist at Central Synagogue, and taught at Queens College. As winner of a Fulbright-García Robles grant from the US and Mexican governments, he established a class in organ studies at the University of Guanajuanto, Mexico, last summer. His recordings included music of Bach, Reger, and Glass, as well as Iberian and Mexican composers, on such labels as Catalyst (BMG), O.M., Pickwick, and Titanic. His more recent performances included recitals in Spain as part of the festival Els Orgues de Catalunya, a series of recitals on the historic Appleton organ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, recordings of the historic Aeolian organ at the Frick Collection, and an inaugural recital for the van den Heuvel organ at the Church of the Holy Apostles in New York. Survivors include his parents, a brother, and two sisters. A service was held on March 28 at the Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City.

Related Content

March 18, 2024
The celebration “These people will be your friends for life,” Karel Paukert pronounced to his organ class at Northwestern University in the mid-1970s…
March 18, 2024
That ingenious business Great Britain’s King George III (1738–1820), whose oppressive rule over the American colonies led to the American…
March 18, 2024
Robert Eugene Leftwich Robert Eugene Leftwich died January 13, 2024. He was born July 2, 1940, in Texas and grew up in Longmont, Colorado. He…