Kurt Loebel (Löbl)

1921 Wien - 2007 Cleveland
Kurt Löbl/ Loebel, violinist, teacher, author, born December 19, 1921 in Vienna, visited the Gymnasium in Vienna's 7th district, Kandlgasse. After studies at the Volkskonservatorium, from 1936 to 1938 he studied violin at the Academy of Music and performing Arts in Vienna with Ernst Morawec, performing in childrens' concerts, school concerts and other occasions and playing chamber music with his school friends Julius Rudel and Georg Kreisler. Being thrown out of school and the Music Academy, in 1939 he managed to flee with $30,- in his pockets and his violin to the USA, where some months later he was reunited with his parents. To earn a living he worked as a door-to-door cravat salesman, telegram delivery boy, and a temporary worker at Columbia Records, Conn; in 1941 he was awarded a scholarship for Julliard School of Music, where he continued his violin studies with Louis J. Bostelman and Louis Persinger. . After graduation in 1943 he joined the US-Army and on June 6, 1944 participated in D-Day (invasion of the Allied Forces in Normandy). later on acting as a translator for German prisoners of war. In 1945 he returned to the USA, where after two seasons with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1947 he joined the First Violins of the Cleveland Orchestra, a position he kept for 50 years. 1968 to 2007 he was a faculty member of Kent / Blossom Festival School and since 1949 a violin teacher at the Preparatory Department of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he had completed his studies with Joseph Knitzer with a B. M. and M. M; first violin of the Symphonia Quartet and author of numerous articles in The Instrumentalist, Music Educators Journal, Fine Music Magazine, The Musikmakers (Columbia University Press) und CIM Notes. Kurt Loebel passed away October 18th, 2007 in Cleveland. Update Primavera Driessen Gruber August 18, 2015