Trivia

Served as musical director for programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Concert pianist. Introduced Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 to the US in the 1930s. During WWII, accompanied violinist Jascha Heifetz on a USO tour of war zones in North Africa and Italy.

He studied at the Institute of Musical Art, the forerunner of the Juilliard School, and earned a PhD at Columbia.

He worked on the broadcasts of Arturo Toscanini's "NBC Symphony of the Air", "The Bell Telephone Hour", and a 1950s children's show, "The Rootie Kazootie Show", for which he played the organ.

When he accompanied Jascha Heifetz on an 8-week USO tour in Italy in WWII, he played a small, Army-green piano from an open truck.

In 2002, he and his wife appeared in a De Beers diamond commercial. They portrayed an elderly couple strolling in a park, holding hands, while a young couple look on.