Lipkin, Seymour

Lipkin, Seymour, American pianist, conductor, and teacher; b. Detroit, May 14, 1927. He studied piano as a child and appeared as soloist in Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto with the Detroit Civic Orch. (1938). He then studied formally at the Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia with Saperton (1938–41) and with Serkin and Horszowski (B.Mus., 1947), and also studied conducting with Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood (summers, 1946; 1948–49) and was apprentice conductor to Szell and the Cleveland Orch. (1947–48). After winning first prize in the Rachmaninoff Piano Competition (1948), he played the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto with Koussevitzky and the Boston Sym. Orch. that same year and subsequently appeared as a soloist with major U.S. orchs. He made his formal conducting debut with the N.Y.C. Opera leading Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti (1958); then was an asst. conductor of the N.Y. Phil. (1959–60) and music director of the Long Island Sym. Orch. (1963–79). He was also music director of N.Y.’s Joffrey Ballet (1966–68), then its principal guest conductor (1968–72), and once again its music director (1972–79). He taught at Marymount Coll. in Tarrytown, N.Y. (1963–72; chairman of the music dept., 1968–71), the Curtis Inst. of Music (from 1969), the Manhattan School of Music (1972–87), the New England Cons, of Music in Boston (1984–86), and the Juilliard School in N.Y. (from 1986); also served as artistic director of the Univ. of Md. International Piano Festival and William Kapell Piano Competition (1988–92).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire