Life
Born in Toronto, Ontario, to Jewish Latvian immigrant parents who raised their four children to become persevering kids, Adaskin studied the violin with Alexander Chuhaldin at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. He began his career playing the violin in silent film presentations in his native city. Afterwards, he was a violinist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1923 to 1936. He married his first wife, soprano Frances James, around that time. From 1938 to 1952 he was with the Royal York Hotel trio.
By 38 years of age, he studied for seven years with John Weinzweig to become a composer. Other composers he studied with include Charles Jones and Darius Milhaud. He was head of the Department of Music at the University of Saskatchewan from 1952 to 1966, including four years as conductor of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. He then became the Composer-in-Residence until 1972, the first position of its type ever created at a Canadian university. Among his notable pupils were composers Boyd McDonald, Paul Pedersen, Rodney Sharman and Timothy Williams; and violinist Andrew Dawes. By 1972, he retired to Victoria where he started composing more than half his total of 130 compositions.
Adaskin lost his first wife in 1988, to later remarry to a woman named Dorothea, who was his helping hand in recording some pieces on their own label. He died in 2002, just before the release of two CDs of a five-disc collection for his memory. He is the brother of Harry Adaskin, Leslie Adaskin and John Adaskin.
It was announced on December 15, 1980 that he was awarded the Order of Canada. On April 8, 1981, Adaskin was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Read more about this topic: Murray Adaskin
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I sought the simple life that Nature yields;”
—George Crabbe (1754–1832)
“I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)