Hyam Greenbaum

Hyam ‘Bumps’ Greenbaum (12 May 1901 – 13 May 1942) was an English conductor, violinist and composer, who, in 1936, became the world’s first conductor of a television orchestra. He was friendly with many of his English music contemporaries, including Constant Lambert, Alan Rawsthorne, and William Walton, and often helped them with technical advice on orchestration. His brother Bernard (1917–1993) was an artist, and his sister was the pianist and composer Kyla Greenbaum (1922–2017). Early career As a child, Greenbaum was taught violin by his English mother Edith (née Etherington) and piano by his father (Solomon Greenbaum, a Jewish Russian born in Poland and sent to England to train as a tailor). He made his musical debut in Brighton at the age of seven, playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto in a velvet suit and lace collar. He studied at the Brighton School of Music before winning an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1912, aged eleven. His nickname ‘Bumps’ was coined after a phrenologist “had expressed amazement at the configurations of his cranium”. and from 1923 until 1936 played second violin and piano for the Diaghilev Ballet. Others were Cecil Gray, E. J. Moeran