Simon Bucharoff

Simon Bucharoff (April 20, 1881 – November 24, 1955, born Simon Buchhalter) was an American pianist, composer and educator. Bucharoff was born in Berdychiv, Russian Empire. His father was a cantor. His brother Isadore Buchhalter was also a pianist and educator who settled in Chicago. His family emigrated to New York when he was 11, where he began his piano studies with Paolo Gallico and Leopold Kramer. He returned to Europe and graduated from the Vienna Conservatory in 1902, having studied piano with Julius Epstein and Emil Sauer and composition with Stephen Stocker and Robert Fuchs. He married Jennie G. Bluestone in 1902, and became a US citizen in 1904. He joined the Wichita College of Music in 1907, and in 1911 moved to Chicago and began focusing on composition. future US Vice President Charles Dawes was a patron, In 1919, he changed his last name from Buchhalter to Bucharoff and moved to Europe in an attempt to further his composition career. After failing to produce an opera based on André Geiger’s La Reine amoureuse with Pierre Maudru, he moved to Germany and succeeded in producing his next opera Sakhara in 1924. Upon returning to America in the 1920s, his works received promine