Herbert Zipper - Emigration To The United States

Emigration To The United States

In 1946, Zipper and his wife joined the rest of his family in the United States. His main reason for the trip was as a fundraising mission for the Philippine Cultural Rehabilitation Program that he had helped start. After only a few months, he received word that the program had been put on hold. While that project was stalled, Zipper saw as a deficit in arts education in U.S. schools and embarked on what would be his major life work — to help start community arts programs. In 1947, Zipper was offered a teaching post at The New School for Social Research in New York that had been founded in 1918 by Alvin Johnson, as one of the country’s first adult education centers. Over the next few decades, Zipper went on to start many community art centers throughout the country. He also worked on reviving the disbanded Brooklyn Symphony, a group which had not been active since their conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, had returned to England. Zipper’s role of conductor with the Brooklyn Symphony focused much of their work on school outreach programs while Zipper became increasingly involved in championing racial equality, social justice, and environmental causes.

In 1953, Zipper took the position of director of the Winnetka School of Music in Chicago, where he worked during the school year, and then returned to Manila each summer to conduct a summer concert series. Winnetka was a community art school that served children and adults in afternoon and evening programs. In 1954, through a large fundraising effort, the school was moved to a better location, expanded, and renamed the Music Center of North Shore. Through this school, Zipper organized a professional orchestra whose purpose was to play concerts in public schools. In 1972, Zipper took a job in California as the project director for the School of Performing Arts at the University of Southern California. His beloved wife and partner Trudl died in 1976 of lung cancer. Despite his grief, Zipper continued his zeal for the arts and in the early 1980s began trips to China where he served as a teacher, arts advocate, and conductor. Zipper remained active in the arts until his death in 1997 at the age of 92.

He was the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Never Give Up: The 20th Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper.