Klarinet Archive - Posting 000354.txt from 2001/05

From: "Steve Hartman" <sdh902@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Henry Schuman
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 09:09:26 -0400

Henry Schuman, Oboist, Conductor and Festival Director, Dies at 69
By Anthony Tommasini

Henry Schuman, a prominent oboist, conductor and teacher who founded
and directed Our Bach Concerts, a popular series of midnight
performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in the 1970's,
died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 69.

The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter, Kathy Schuman.

Mr. Schuman was a ubiquitous figure in the concert life of New
York, the longtime principal oboist of the Brooklyn Philharmonic,
the Westchester Philharmonic and the Opera Orchestra of New York,
and the music director of the Washington Square Music Festival,
with which he planned over 100 concerts, including the forthcoming
season's programs.

Since 1970 he taught at the Manhattan School of Music. Just this
week Mr. Schuman had been rehearsing for the Opera Orchestra's
performance on Sunday of Donizetti's "Maria Stuarda," conducted by
Eve Queler, Mr. Schuman's former classmate from the High School of
Music and Art in New York.

Mr. Schuman was born on Oct. 24, 1931, in Detroit. His father, a
book publisher, moved the family to New York during Mr. Schuman's
early years. After high school, Mr. Schuman attended the Juilliard
School, where he studied oboe with Harold Gomberg. He became
principal oboist with the Piccola Accademia Musicale in Florence,
then served in the armed forces, playing principal oboe with the
Seventh Army Symphony in Europe from 1956 to '58.
Back in New York in 1958, he became the principal oboist with the
Clarion Orchestra, conducted by Newell Jenkins. As soloist with
that ensemble Mr. Schuman toured the Soviet Union and Romania for
two months in 1963, playing 10 performances of a Vivaldi concerto,
while also serving as the orchestra's personnel manager when tours
by American arts ensembles to the Soviet Union presented untold
organizational challenges.
Mr. Schuman was solo English horn under the conductor Leopold
Stokowski with the Symphony of the Air from 1958 to '62, and the
next year he became the principal oboist with Stokowski's American
Symphony Orchestra.
Among the other ensembles that he conducted were the Mostly Mozart
Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Municipal
Orchestra of São Paulo in Brazil. In addition to the Manhattan
School, he taught at Queens College, the City University of New
York and the Winter Music Festival in São Paulo. He was a visiting
professor at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and at
Indiana University.
In addition to his daughter, the artistic administrator of
Carnegie Hall, he is survived by his companion, Suzette Jacobs, of
Teaneck, N.J.

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