Arthur Loesser

Arthur Loesser (Aug. 26, 1894 - Jan. 4, 1969) was born in New York City and began playing piano at age six. A graduate of Columbia and the Institute of Musical Art (later known as Julliard) he toured the world as a concert pianist beginning in 1913.

During World War II he was an officer and a Japanese interpreter, and later became the first American to appear in Japan after the war, with the Nippon Symphony.

Loesser had joined the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1926, becoming head of the piano department in 1953. He was program editor and annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra (1937 - 1942), and a music critic for the Cleveland Press (1938 - 1956).

He also wrote popular books on music, Humor in American Song (1943) and Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History (1954).

DID YOU KNOW ..? Loesser tells us the reason the piano became the most acceptable instrument for genteel ladies in the Western World is because of all of the things women aren't required to do to play one. They need not purse their lips, nor wrap them around anything, spread their legs or crane their necks. They just sit up straight and tap their fingers. But then, Loesser never saw Tori Amos.

In 1968, Loesser was awarded a special citation from the Cleveland Arts Prize for Distinguished Service to the Arts.

Arthur was the elder half-brother to Broadway composer Frank Loesser. It was Arthur who referred to himself as "the evil of two Loessers," a line Frank would steal and use in reference to his first wife.

Sources:
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Wikipedia
Cleveland Arts Prize

Howard Swanson

Howard Swanson (1907-1978)
"The only thing I live for is my music."
Swanson and his family left Atlanta when he was nine years-old and moved to Cleveland. In 1925 he graduated from Glenville High, but that same year his father died forcing him as the eldest of three children to join the workforce. He was employed with the U.S. Postal service for over ten years, but continued the musical instruction his mother had insisted upon for all of her children.

In 1930 he sought to continue his piano instruction by taking courses at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where his teachers encouraged him to take night work so that he could take a full load of music course during the day. This is where we find him in 1936, after deciding that it would be more time-effective to be a composer, that striving to become a professional pianist was impossible while holding down a job.

He would eventually study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger until the war forced him to return to the States and languish for several years until his first symphony (based on the Langston Hughes poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers) was performed at Carnegie Hall. He achieved fame in New York and was able to return to to Europe to continue his studies.

In virtually all of his compositions, Swanson worked within the conventional forms of classical music, but he was able to infuse them with a personal style grounded in African American traditions. - New Georgia Encyclopedia