Robert Bialek (music producer)

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Robert Bialek (born February 3, 1922 in Washington, DC , † May 30, 2006 ibid) was an American music dealer, concert promoter and album producer. He received a Grammy Award in 1961 for an album with speeches by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt .

biography

Robert Bialek attended Theodore Roosevelt High School and George Washington University in his hometown. In the Second World War he was drafted as a medic and was used in the German Ardennes offensive .

Bialek was very interested in music and played the piano himself. In 1952, he and his wife opened a record store in Dupont Circle in northwest Washington. It later became the Discount Book and Record Shop with two other branches in the capital. In addition, he was also involved in musicians and music productions. In the field of classical music, he organized annual performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra in Washington in the 1960s and 1970s . He helped the local National Symphony Orchestra to record works by Alan Hovhaness , Alberto Ginastera and Dave Amram . He also organized concerts in other areas of music, for example for folk singer Tom Glazer , jazz pianist Erroll Garner , singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer and flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal .

In addition to music, Bialek was also politically active. As early as 1960, with the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, he produced an album compilation (6 LPs) with 33 speeches by her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt , the 32nd US President , who served in World War II and who died in 1945. For the release FDR Speaks he was awarded a Grammy Award for best spoken album as a producer . He later became involved in Neighbors Inc. against racism and in the Washington Musicians for Nuclear Disarmament movement against nuclear weapons.

As early as the 1980s, health problems began to limit him. He had to go out of his music business and undergo two treatments for a benign brain tumor . In 2006, at the age of 84, he died in a nursing home in Washington after a heart attack.

swell

  1. ^ Robert Bialek in the Grammy Database, accessed February 10, 2020

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bialek, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American record producer and concert promoter
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC , USA
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 2006
Place of death Washington, DC , USA