Efrem Zimbalist Sr. ( – February 22, 1985) was a concert violinist, composer, conductor and director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Early life Efrem Zimbalist Sr. was born on April 9, 1888, O. S., equivalent to April 21, 1889, in the Gregorian calendar, as reported in many newspaper obituaries, in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the son of Jewish parents Maria (née Litvinoff) and Aron Zimbalist (Цимбалист, Russian pronunciation ), who was a conductor. By the age of nine, Efrem Zimbalist was first violin in his father's orchestra. At age 12 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and studied under Leopold Auer. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1907 after winning a gold medal and the Rubinstein Prize, and by age 21 was considered one of the world's greatest violinists. Career After graduation he debuted in Berlin (playing the Brahms Concerto) and London in 1907 and in the United States in 1911, with the Symphony Orchestra. In 1912, he played the Glazunov Concerto in a concert marking Leopold Stokowski's first appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra. He then settled in the United States. He did much to popularize the performance of classical music in his adopted country. In 1917, he was elected as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha Chapter at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He retired as a violinist in 1949, but returned in 1952 to give the first performance of the Violin Concerto by Gian Carlo Menotti. He retired again in 1955. He served as a juror of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 and 1966. Early in his career he owned the "Titian" Stradivarius violin. Curtis Institute In 1928, Zimbalist began teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He was its director from 1941 to 1968. His pupils included such distinguished musicians as Lynn Blakeslee, Aaron Rosand, Oscar Shumsky, Norman Carol, Joseph Silverstein, Jascha Brodsky, John Dalley, Michael Tree, Felix Slatkin, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Harold Wippler, Leonid Bolotine, Takaoki Sugitani, Helen Kwalwasser, and Hidetaro Suzuki. () Compositions His own compositions include a violin concerto, a piano concerto (1959), the American Rhapsody, a tone poem called Daphnis and Chloe, a Fantasy on themes from The Golden Cockerel by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a Fantasy on Bizet's Carmen (1936), and a piece called Sarasateana, for viola and piano. He also wrote