Allegro
Requiem
Volume C, No. 1January, 2000
Tom Barone – Violin
Lester Bowie – Trumpet/Flugelhorn
Herbert Daner – Saxophone
LaNoue Davenport – Recorder
Artie Fields – Saxophone
Floyd Bernard Ford I – Composer/Arranger/Conductor
Earl B. Freeman – Violin
Felix Galimir – Violin
Jacob Glick – Viola
Jan Gorbaty – Piano
Peter A. Gulotta – Guitar
Bassie Harris – Bass
Jessel Harris – Steel Drums
David Kerne – Piano
Frank Kramer – Bass
Sidney Lederman – Saxophone
Eufrosina Railenau – Viola
Bernard Robbins – Violin
Anthony M. Scalisi – Guitar
Jack Shapiro – Saxophone
Sidney Svedrofsky – Piano
Lester Bowie, 58, a jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player, band leader and composer, died on Nov. 8. He had joined Local 802 in 1979.
Mr. Bowie began studying the trumpet at the age of 5, played in dance bands as a teenager and, after serving for four years in the army, played in bands led by rhythm and blues performers including Albert King, Jackie Wilson, Rufus Thomas and Joe Tex. He married R&B singer Fontella Bass and moved to Chicago in 1965 to become her musical director. There he worked with a big band led by George Hunter and played in rhythm-and-blues studio sessions.
He was a founding member and the second president of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a nonprofit cooperative organized in 1965. Mr. Bowie became part of a band created by saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, along with bassist Malachi Favors and drummer Phillip Wilson, which in 1969 became known as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Finding few opportunities to perform in this country, they spent two years in France, recording and performing widely. On returning to the United States, they began recording for Atlantic records and reaching wider audiences. In the ’70s Mr. Bowie also traveled to Jamaica and Nigeria.
He played with the avant-garde group The Leaders from 1986 and led the all-brass group Brass Fantasy from 1989. He assembled a 59-piece band, the Sho Nuff Orchestra, for a concert at Symphony Space. He also recorded theme music for the Cosby Show in 1990 and worked on film soundtracks. He taught at clinics and served as artist-in-residence at Yale, Dartmouth and Harvard.
Mr. Bowie is survived by his wife Deborah, father W. Lester Bowie, Sr., brothers Byron and Joseph, children Larry Stevenson, Ju’lene Coney, Nueka Mitchell, Sukari Ivester, Nahnamous Bowie and Zola Bowie, and ten grandchildren.
LaNoue Davenport
LaNoue Davenport, 77 a recorder player who pioneered in the revival of early music and period instruments, died on Nov. 4. He had been a member of Local 802 since 1946.
Born in Dallas, Mr. Davenport began playing the trumpet in small jazz bands. He won a double scholarship in basketball and music at Texas Christian University, and later served in the Navy during World War II, playing the trumpet in Claude Thornhill’s band, which toured from ship to ship. After the war he moved to New York City, where he performed in Broadway pit orchestras.
His interest in early music developed after he enrolled in the New York College of Music in 1948. In 1953 he began playing with the newly formed New York Pro Musica, assuming the directorship in 1966. In 1970 he formed his own ensemble, Music For a While. In 1957 Mr. Davenport founded and directed the Manhattan Recorder Consort. He became the first national president of the American Recorder Society in 1960.
He is survived by his wife, the soprano Sheila Schonbrun-Davenport, sons Stefan, Chester, Darius and Mark, and six grandchildren.
Floyd Bernard Ford I
Floyd Bernard Ford I, 68, a composer, arranger and conductor, and a member of Local 802 for almost 50 years, died on Nov. 9.
Mr. Ford earned a degree in Business Administration and a master’s degree, but his main passion in life was music. In his earlier years, he played many instruments – including the clarinet and synthesizer – and performed in night clubs in the northeastern United States.
He is survived by his wife Agnes Ellison, sons Floyd II, Albert and William, daughters Marie, Katherine and Mercedes, brothers Vannoy and Walter, sister Jacquelin, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Felix Galimir
Felix Galimir, 89, a violinist and teacher who had been an 802 member since 1938, died on Nov. 10. Mr. Galimir had an enormous influence on chamber music, as a teacher of generations of instrumentalists (at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont, the Juilliard School and Mannes College in New York City and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia), a prominent quartet player, and a colleague of many of this century’s great composers (including Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Ernst Krenek and Alexander von Zemlinksy).
Born in Vienna to Sephardic Jewish parents, he began studying the violin at the New Vienna Conservatory at the age of 12. By the early 1930s he had made his public debut and had formed the Galimir String Quartet, in which his sisters were the other players. Galimir was hired by the Vienna Philharmonic in 1936, but the rising tide of anti-Semitism soon closed the doors to a musical career in Austria; the following season he was dismissed from the orchestra. He and two of his sisters accepted Bronislaw Huberman’s invitation to come to Palestine, where he was starting the orchestra that became the Israel Philharmonic.
In 1938 Mr. Galimir emigrated to New York. He served as first violinist of the NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1939 to 1954, and as the concertmaster of NBC’s Symphony of the Air from 1954 to 1956. By the early 1950s, he was increasingly involved in chamber music – with his own quartet, with the New York Philomusica ensemble, and at Marlboro, to which he was invited by Rudolf Serkin in 1952.
After 1954, when he joined the faculty of the City College of New York, he devoted himself increasingly to teaching. His affiliation with the Juilliard School began in 1962, and he was appointed head of the chamber music department at the Curtis Institute in 1972. In 1976 he began teaching at the Mannes College of Music. Mr. Galimir recorded on the Columbia, Decca, Vanguard and Period labels.
Jacob Glick
Jacob Glick, 74, a violist and an 802 member for more than 50 years, died on Nov. 1.
Born in Philadelphia, he studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and the New School of Music in Philadelphia. He also attended the Yale Summer School of Music, where he worked with violist Lillian Fuchs.
Jacob Glick had a long and distinguished career as a recitalist, chamber musician, lecturer and teacher. He performed widely in the United States and throughout the world on the viola and viola d’amore. He performed with several New York new-music groups, including the Group for Contemporary Music and the Contemporary Chamber Players. He was also a member of the Penn Contemporary Players at the University of Pennsylvania, the Jennings String Quartet and the Silvermine String Quartet.
Mr. Glick made more than 100 recordings for major labels, reflecting his great enthusiasm for all styles of music from the baroque to the most contemporary. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s he helped to premiere many new and experimental works.
A teacher and chamber music coach, he was on the music faculty of Bennington College for more than two decades and served as Director of the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East.
He is survived by his wife, Lilo Kantorowicz-Glick, daughters Judith and Jane, and two grandchildren.
Eufrosina Railenau
Eufrosina Railenau, 39, principal violist of the New York City Opera orchestra and an 802 member since 1985, died on Nov. 20.
Born in Romania, Ms. Railenau came to the United States in 1978 to study, earning a master’s degree at the Eastman School of Music and a doctorate at the Juilliard School, where she studied with Lillian Fuchs.
She joined the New York City Opera as principal violist in 1988 and also was a substitute player for the New York Philharmonic and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, touring and recording with them. As a chamber music player, Ms. Railenau performed as a guest with the Juilliard Quartet, Mendelsohn Quartet, Sea Cliff Chamber Players, Da Capo Chamber Players and Chelsea Chamber Ensemble.
She is survived by her mother Sylvia, father Nicolau and brother Val, a violinist and violist and a member of Local 802.
Bernard Robbins
Bernard Robbins, 86, a violinist with the New York Philharmonic for 28 years, died on Nov. 28. He had been a member of Local 802 since 1934.
Mr. Robbins grew up in the Bronx and attended New York City public schools. He began studying the violin at the age of 7. He entered City College at 15 and, by the time he was 22, had earned a bachelor’s degree from that institution, a master’s in mathematics from Columbia University, and a degree from the Juilliard school of Music.
He began his playing career in the National Symphony Orchestra, and in 1937 became a member of the Stradivarius String Quartet. In 1944 he went on to play with the Stuyvesant String Quartet and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. He joined the New York Philharmonic in 1955 and remained with the orchestra until his retirement in 1983.
He is survived by his wife Lilly, daughters Julie, Sheila and Ellen, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.