Noel Pointer

Noel Pointer was an American jazz violinist, composer, and record producer born on December 26, 1954.  Just as the lives of many musical luminaries were cut short – Wolfgang Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, George Gershwin, Franz Schubert, Vasa Prihoda, Glenn Gould, Ginette Neveu, Josef Hassid, Arma Senkrah, Andrei Korsakov, and Michael Rabin come to mind – his life was also cut short at a very early age.  What he could have accomplished is anyone’s guess but he was well on his way to becoming a legend.  Early in his career he decided to take up jazz violin and went as far as producing albums.  Pointer also became involved in national social causes such as literacy and the arts, receiving special citations from the U.S. Congress.  In 1981, he was nominated for a Grammy.  He was 26 years old.  Pointer began his music studies at an early age but exactly what age I do not know.  He became interested in jazz while studying at New York’s High School for Music and Art.  He began playing for studio sessions while at the Manhattan School of Music.  His public debut took place at age 13 in New York, with the Symphony of the New World.  He went on to appear with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony as a classical violinist.  By age 19, Pointer was playing regularly with many theatre orchestras in New York City, including the Radio City Music Hall Symphony, the Dance Theatre of Harlem Orchestra, and the Apollo Theatre Orchestra.  Pointer enjoyed steady work as a club jazz violinist in New York as well.  He recorded for the Blue Note, United Artists, and Liberty record labels.  He also recorded with a variety of artists.  Of his seven solo albums, four reached Billboard’s top five jazz albums list.  As a composer, Pointer wrote music for several dance troupes in New York.  He died suddenly on December 9, 1994, at age 39.  

Charles Loeffler

Charles Loeffler (Charles Martin Loeffler) was a German violinist, composer, and teacher born (in Schoneberg, Germany – the outskirts of Berlin) on January 30, 1861.  While claiming to be French (Alsatian), he spent most of his career in the U.S. and rose to prominence before being almost forgotten.  He was resentful toward his native Germany because his father had been imprisoned for being on the wrong political side of things and died in prison.  Not unlike violinist Nicolai Berezowsky many years later, he was considered a major composer in his day but gradually fell out of favor.  Many music critics called him one of America’s greatest composers.  He began his violin studies at about age 9, in 1870.  Several sources state that he entered the Advanced School for Music in Berlin at age 13, that is, 1874.  There, he studied with Joseph Joachim and Edouard Rappoldi.  Composition he studied with Clara Schumann’s half-brother, Woldemar Bargiel.  After three years, he traveled to France where he further studied (presumably at the Paris Conservatory) - violin with Joseph Lambert Massart (pupil of Rodolphe Kreutzer) and composition with Ernest Guiraud, teacher also of Claude Debussy.  Loeffler played in the famous Pasdeloup Orchestra and later on (1979 to 1881) in a private orchestra engaged by Paul von Derwies.  Cesar Thomson also played in this private orchestra although he was not there by the time Loeffler arrived.  Loeffler was 20 years old when he left for the U.S.  One source states Loeffler set foot in the U.S. on July 27, 1881.  By then, he had already lived in Germany, France, Russia, Hungary, and Switzerland.  He soon got a job playing in the New York Symphony.  He also played in orchestras put together for occasional concerts by Theodore Thomas.  In 1882, he was engaged by the Boston Symphony, where he was assistant concertmaster for over twenty years.  Franz Kneisel was concertmaster during most of those years (1885-1903.)  Loeffler played with the orchestra until 1903.  His first appearance as soloist with the Boston Symphony took place on November 20, 1891.  He played one of his own works, his first orchestral composition.  His works were often played by American Orchestras during his lifetime.  In 1905, none other than violinist Karl Halir and composer Richard Strauss presented one of his works for violin and orchestra in Berlin.  It has been said that Loeffler was a very careful and conscientious composer.  Here is one example of a chamber music work.  His music has been described as eclectic, influenced by the Symbolist movement.  He even wrote music for jazz band, possibly the first classical composer to do so.  His most famous work is something called A Pagan Poem.  Opinions vary, of course, but in my estimation, this work is worthy of being included in the repertoire of every orchestra in the world.  As far as I know, the  Pagan Poem has only been recorded 3 times.  As did violinist Richard Burgin much later, Loeffler frequently traveled to France and other parts of Europe.  After leaving the Boston Symphony, he was very active not only composing but in various musical endeavors.  He was on the Board of Directors of the Boston Opera Company at its inception in 1908.  He was instrumental in establishing the Juilliard School of Music in New York in 1924.  Other composers dedicated works to him.  He lived long enough to count George Gershwin among his friends.  After his death, his manuscripts and correspondence went to the Library of Congress.  The rest of his possessions went to the French Academy and the Paris Conservatory.  His best-known students are probably Arthur Hartmann and Katherine Swift (George Gershwin’s lover.)  Loeffler died (in Medfield, Massachusetts) on May 19, 1935, at age 74.  Among other violins, Loeffler played a JB Vuillaume from (about) 1840 and a 1710 Stradivarius now known as the Duc De Camposelice or Camposelice for short.  He used the violin between 1894 and 1928, at which time it was returned to its Boston owner.  That Stradivarius was later owned by Vasa Prihoda, husband of Austrian violinist Alma Rose for a time, and then eventually ended up with the Nippon Foundation until it was sold at auction in 2006. 

Lee Actor

Lee Actor is an American violinist, composer, and conductor with an unfolding career as a very successful composer, a career which almost happened as a second thought.  He is also an electrical engineer and has worked for years in the Information Technology field as well as the video game industry.  The dual endeavors are not as far apart as many would imagine – not nearly.  Music and Science – especially mathematics – are intimately intertwined.  Actor’s engineering degrees are from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1970-1975, Troy, New York, about 150 miles north of New York City), one of the top science schools in the country.  Simultaneously studying music and science, he chose to pursue science upon graduation and worked at GTE in Boston for several years.  One of his violin professors was Angelo Frascarelli.  Although he began violin studies at age 7, kept up his pursuit of music studies at Rensselaer, played violin and viola in the Albany (New York) Symphony for three years (1972-1975), Actor also devoted  time to composition.  While working full-time, he studied conducting privately with David Epstein at MIT (Boston, 1975-1978) and composition with Donald Sur.  Up until 1978, Actor was playing violin in various orchestras on a regular basis and was composing chamber music works in his spare time.  Three years later (1979), he found himself in Silicon Valley (California), working in the IT field but  taking advanced courses in music as well.  While there, Actor secured his Master’s degree in composition from San Jose State University (1982) and pursued further studies at the University of California at Berkeley.  In 1982, Actor went to work for a start-up video game company.  The industry was in its infancy.  That led to his starting his own video game development company in 1988.  In 1997, he was one of three founders of Universal Digital Arts, a subsidiary of Universal Studios.  Finally, in 2000, he went to work as Director of Engineering for yet another high-tech start-up and retired from the industry one year later.  All this time, music had never been far away.  It is interesting that several famous musicians in history have had other careers, almost simultaneously as they were playing or writing music – Jean-Marie Leclair, Charles Dancla, Pierre Baillot, Alexander Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky, Ignace Paderewski, Camille Saint Saens, Charles Ives, and Efrem Zimbalist come to mind.  In 2001, Actor was invited to fill the Assistant Conductor post with the Palo Alto Symphony.  However, Actor had already been conducting various orchestras since 1974.  He was later (2002) appointed Composer-in-Residence of the same orchestra and thus began to compose prolifically.  As far as I know, Actor does not devote much time to small-scale works.  Every review of his orchestral music consistently praises his skills, originality, and ingenuity as a composer.  Actor has mostly put the violin aside – as have Alan Gilbert, Lorin Maazel, David Zinman, Jap Van Zweden, and a few other violinists – in favor of other pursuits in music, composition and conductng.  English violinist Leonard Salzedo used to play violin in the Royal Philharmonic (UK) and actually continued playing in that orchestra for quite some time while devoting a lot of his spare time to composition – mostly ballet music.  That, however, is rare.  Other violinists who turned from playing to other endeavors include Theodore Thomas, Victor Young, Eddy Brown, Patricia Travers, Iso Briselli, Pierre Monteux, Joseph Achron, Eugene Ormandy, and Arthur Judson.  Actor has composed concertos for horn, alto saxophone, timpani, guitar, and violin, as well as various orchestral works, including two symphonies, and most of his works have already been recorded as well, by both European and American orchestras.  It is an enviable record for someone “new” to the composition scene, so to speak.  A typical comment from a critic reads: “[the work] is an incredible tour de force, written by an immensely talented composer.”  About his violin concerto, Pip Clarke (the English violinist for whom it was written), says “The music is exciting, passionate, and highly romantic,...filled with beautiful melodies and writing throughout.”  At a time when most music schools here and abroad shun melody, structure, and tonality, Actor is a true iconoclast.  A video of his Horn Concerto can be found here.  As Bronislaw Huberman always said, the true test of permanence in art has always been audience acceptance and Lee Actor has tons of it to spare.  It’s actually a very good thing that he turned from violin playing to composition.  One of my next blogs will focus on his violin concerto.