With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Jacques Gordon
Music
1899 – 1948
- Biography/Description of Work
Jacques Gordon, a child prodigy violinist, came to America in 1914 from Odessa, Russia. By the age of 21, he had become concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Having played with the Berkshire String Quartet, he began his own, the Gordon String Quartet in 1921. In 1930, he resigned from the orchestra to focus on the quartet, and founded Music Mountain in Falls Village, Canaan, in northwest Connecticut. Through his relationship with the chairman of Chicago-based Sears, Roebuck and Co., Julius Rosenwald, and with the backing of other prominent Chicagoans, Gordon was able to create the Music Mountain campus. The Gordon String Quartet’s first performance there was in August 1930. Gordon was first violinist until his health began to fail in the late 1940s. He was the first conductor of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and headed the violin department at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He received the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for Distinguished Service in Music.
- Sources view
- Ransom, David F., Music Mountain National Register Nomination No. 87001909, National Park Service, 1987. http://musicmountain.org/
- Associated Resource(s)