Nicolas Slonimsky

Nicolas Slonimsky, born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimsky on 4/27/1894, in St. Petersburg, Russia, was a famed musicologist, pianist, composer, and conductor (and a self-described "failed wunderkind") who came to the US in 1923, where he conducted, wrote music articles for newspapers and magazines, lectured at Harvard (not in music, but Slavonic languages), composed orchestral works and commercial jingles, and compiled "big books" of reference that have proven essential to the study of music: i.e. "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians" - editions 5-8, "Music Since 1900" - fifth edition, "Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns" ("the Bible of improvizational jazz" - FZ), and "Lexicon of Musical Invective". As a conductor, he introduced Edgard Varese's Ionisation, in addition to conducting premiere works by Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, and other noted contemporary composers. His autobiography, "Perfect Pitch", was published in 1988. Slonimsky died on Christmas Day 1995, at the age of 101.