Stanley

 April 3, 1917 - February 8, 2015

This is the picture that Maribeth (Stanley's daughter) posted on Facebook today.  On Tuesday Mom told me that Stanley was at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto with heart failure.  He was 97 years old.  He would have turned 98 in April.  He was my Grandmother's youngest brother.  I had the pleasure of getting to know him in the last few years.  I interviewed him in May of 2006, and then saw him and spoke to him here and there.  We went out to lunch at Cora's when Kate was a baby, and we threatened to do it again, but it didn't quite happen.  The last time I saw him was at his 95th birthday party at Maribeth's house.  It was the night before I went back to work after Alice.  It was a lovely evening.

I spoke to Stanley just over a month ago on the 29th of December.  He called me to tell me thank you for the Christmas card, as he does every year.  This year I remembered to put our phone number on the bottom of the card.  (He has in previous years chastised me for not putting the phone number on the card, thereby making it very difficult to track me down!)  We chatted for a few minutes and he sounded great.  He said we would get together and go out to lunch in the spring.  I really believed we would. 

Stanley was very charming and very funny.  He liked to crack jokes and give out compliments.  I just found a recording (through the CMC website) of Godfrey Ridout's, Ballade No.1 for Viola, which was originally written for Stanley in 1938.  Listening to it is making me feel misty.  I must get myself a recording of this.  I wish there was one featuring Stanley. 

I love my family.  I feel blessed to have gotten to know Stanley in the small way that I did.

 

Stanley, Kate, Wendy, Alice - April 1, 2012.

And one last thing.  I feel to include his bio from the Historica Canada site:

Stanley Solomon. Violist, artists' manager, b Toronto 3 Apr 1917. After violin studies 1927-39 at the TCM (RCMT) with Luigi von Kunits, Vino Harisay, and Elie Spivak, he attended the Curtis Institute on scholarship, training (1939-42) as a violist with Max Aronoff, Louis Bailly, and Oscar Shumsky. During RCAF service 1942-4 he toured Canada and Europe as concertmaster and assistant conductor of the RCAF Blackouts review. He was briefly with the Baltimore, Columbia Music Festival, Columbia, and Toronto Philharmonic orchestras before joining the TSO in 1946. He was principal viola 1949-83, then principal emeritus until his retirement in 1988. In 1991 he continued to play with various Ontario orchestras (including the Hamilton Philharmonic) and as a studio musician. Solomon was a member of the Parlow String Quartet 1946-58 and of the Hart House Orchestra 1954-68, becoming manager of the latter in 1966. His Stanley Solomon Concert Artists Management (1963-9) represented such Canadian artists as Howell Glynne, Hyman and Erica Goodman, Sheila Henig, Daryl Irvine, Mary Simmons, Steven Staryk, and David Zafer. He began to teach at the RCMT in 1986.
Solomon's children, Maribeth and Lenny, have had careers in music in pop, studio, orchestral, and jazz settings.