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Efrem Zimbalist Sr. (21 April [O.S. 9 April] 1889 – February 22, 1985) was a concert violinist, composer, conductor and director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Efrem Zimbalist, Sr., was born on April 9, 1888,[5][6][7] O. S., equivalent to April 21, 1889, in the Gregorian calendar, as reported in many newspaper obituaries, in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the son of Jewish parents Maria (née Litvinoff) and Aron Zimbalist (Цимбалист, Russian pronunciation [tsɪmbaˈlʲist]), who was a conductor.[8] By the age of nine, Efrem Zimbalist was first violin in his father’s orchestra. At age 12 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and studied under Leopold Auer. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1907 after winning a gold medal and the Rubinstein Prize, and by age 21 was considered one of the world's greatest violinists.
After graduation he debuted in Berlin (playing the Brahms Concerto) and London in 1907 and in the United States in 1911, with the Symphony Orchestra. In 1912, he played the Glazunov Concerto in a concert marking Leopold Stokowski's first appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra. He then settled in the United States. He did much to popularize the performance of classical music in his adopted country. In 1917, he was elected as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha Chapter at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He retired as a violinist in 1949, but returned in 1952 to give the first performance of the Violin Concerto by Gian Carlo Menotti, which is dedicated to him. He retired again in 1955. He served as a juror of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 and 1966.
His own compositions include a violin concerto, a piano concerto (1959), the American Rhapsody, a tone poem called Daphnis and Chloe, a Fantasy on themes from The Golden Cockerel by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a Fantasy on Bizet's Carmen (1936) and a piece called Sarasateana, for viola and piano. He also wrote an opera, Landara, which premiered in 1956.[11]
Pablo Casals writes in his biography, Joys and Sorrows, that Zimbalist was a member of the 's Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy which Casals founded and chaired in 1936.[12]
Zimbalist married the famous American soprano Alma Gluck and they toured together for a time. Alma Gluck died in 1938. In 1943, having been a widower for five years, he married the Curtis Institute of Music's founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok,[13] daughter of publisher Cyrus Curtis and Louisa Knapp Curtis, and 14 years his senior.
Although he continued to consider himself ethnically Jewish, he found himself attracted, along with his wife Alma, to Anglican Christianity, and they regularly attended the Episcopal Church in New Hartford. Efrem Jr. and Maria were both christened there, and the couple placed Efrem in an Episcopal boarding school in New Hampshire. Efrem Jr. later became active in evangelical circles and was one of the founders of Trinity Broadcasting Network.[14]
He died in 1985, at the age of 95. His and Alma's son, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and their granddaughter, Stephanie Zimbalist, both became popular actors.