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Interesting Facts 4: Bloch

A Minute with Miles
Mary Noble Ours
/
SC Public Radio

The composer Ernest Bloch was born in Switzerland, and after spending time in America, he was thinking of returning to Europe.  But a visit in 1922 to the Library of Congress, in Washington DC, convinced Bloch to stay in this country, and to take American citizenship. He was a famous composer, but Bloch was also one of this country’s most important educators, the founding director of the Cleveland Institute of Music and the first director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

And he was also a master photographer. Bloch was a friend of Ansel Adams and other well-known photographers, and Adams wrote that Bloch “considerably influenced” his work. Upwards of five thousand of Bloch’s negatives, prints, and plates are in the collection of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Ernest Bloch, great composer and teacher, and great photographer.
A Minute with Miles – a production of South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the J.M. Smith Corporation. 

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Miles Hoffman is the founder and violist of the American Chamber Players, with whom he regularly tours the United States, and the Virginia I. Norman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Chamber Music at the Schwob School of Music, in Columbus, Georgia. He has appeared as viola soloist with orchestras across the country, and his solo performances on YouTube have received well over 700,000 views.