British-American famed conductor, violinist and organist by the age of 16. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1905 and began to conduct in 1908. Stokowski worked at the Cincinnati Symphony from 1909-1912, the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1914-1926 and the New York Symphony from 1944-1945. He was known for conducting the Los Angeles Hollywood Bowl, the New York Philharmonic and the Houston Symphony Orchestras. A flamboyant showman and innovator, he was one of the first conductors to record classical music and the first to introduce electrical instruments in the orchestra. He is the author of “Music For All Of Us,” 1943.
The son of a Polish immigrant cabinet maker and an Irish mother, Stokowski was introduced to music at age seven and learned to play violin, organ and piano by age 13. While employed at 16 as a church organist in London, he was discovered by a wealthy patron who sponsored him at The Royal College of Music, after which he entered Queens College at Oxford. Continuing his musical education at the Paris Conservatoire and then in Germany, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1905. Working again as a church organist at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York, the ambitious musician began to conduct The Cincinnati Orchestra in 1908 despite the fact he had no experience in conducting. His next conquest was Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912, where in the following three decades he created and conducted a symphony orchestra that gained world renown.
When financial support for the Philadelphia Orchestra dwindled during the Depression, Stokowski resigned as full-time conductor and was lured to Hollywood to work on film scores including “The Great Broadcast of 1937,” followed by “One Hundred Men” and the Disney classic “Fantasia” in 1941. Soon after he formed The All-American Youth Orchestra with which he toured internationally.
A champion of modern music, he was the first to conduct in the US Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand Voices,” and Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre de Printemps.” His innovative concerts at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1952-1953 introduced the work of new American composers to the public, with the unusual feature of recording the concerts as they took place. “The conventional composer usually has to wait for somebody else to play his music and it might be to his advantage to work, like the painter, directly on the materials of sound – the tape recorder, for instance.”
Stokowski became an American citizen in 1915. In 1911 he married concert pianist Olga Samaroff (born Lucie Hickenlooper); they divorced in 1923. His second marriage to Evangeline Brewster Johnson in 1926 ended in divorce in 1937 and on 04/21/1945 he married Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco. He had a daughter Sonia by his first marriage, two daughters, Lyuba and Sadja, by the second marriage and two sons by his third marriage. A philanderer, his affair with Greta Garbo in the ’30s became tabloid news. In their rented Italian villa, Stokowski, a health fanatic, introduced Garbo to yoga.
Stokowski died of heart failure in Nether Wallop, England on 9/13/1977.
Link to Wikipedia biography