Arthur Loesser

Arthur Loesser (born August 26, 1894 in New York , † January 4, 1969 in Cleveland , Ohio ) was an American pianist, music teacher and writer.

The half-brother of the composer Frank Loesser attended New York's City College and then studied zoology at Columbia University before becoming a student of Sigismond Stojowski and Percy Goetschius at the Institute of Musical Arts , the forerunner of the Juilliard School of Music .

In 1913 he made his debut as a pianist in Berlin . In the following years he undertook extensive concert tours: through the USA and Australia with the violinist Maud Powell (1914-1919), with the Russian violinist Mischa Elman through Japan, China and the Philippines (1920-1921) and with the singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink again through the USA (1921–1922).

Since 1926 he was a professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music . From 1943 he served in the US Army Intelligence Department with the rank of major and in this capacity came to Tokyo at the end of 1945 , where he - in uniform - gave a concert with the Nippon Philharmonic Orchestra .

After the war he worked again at the Cleveland Institute, where he headed the piano department since 1953, as well as music critic for the Cleveland Press . After Humor in American Song (1943), his main work Men Women and Pianos: A Social History was published in 1953 . In 1965, along with Albert Petrak and Gregor Benko, he was one of the founders of the International Piano Archives (later International Piano Archives at Maryland - APAM), of which he became the first president.