Lazare Saminsky

Lazare Saminsky (born Lazar Semyonovich Saminsky; ; 8 November 1882 – 30 June 1959) was a Russian-American performer, conductor and composer, especially of Jewish music. Life Born to a merchant family in Valehotsulove (now ), near Odessa, Saminsky received a broad education in the arts, sciences and languages. He studied music at the Odessa Conservatoire from 1903–1905, and then went to Moscow, where he studied mathematics and philosophy as well as music. Expelled for his participation in the student protests of 1905, he went to St.Petersburg, where he studied with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Anatoly Lyadov, and Nikolai Tcherepnin. While still a student he became a founder member, with Mikhail Gnesin, Lyubov Streicher, and others, of the ‘Society for Jewish Folk Music’. He wrote music for the Society and helped organise its earliest publication. He continued an active member, even though from 1911 to 1918 he lived in Tbilisi, where he also interested himself in Georgian and Armenian music, and from 1917 to 1918 he was head of the conservatory. During this period he also wrote an opera Tsar Yulian (Emperor Julian) (which he later destroyed), and researched Jewish music of the Caucasian