Philip
Robert Abas (more
rarely Abbas ; born January
20, 1886 in Amsterdam , Netherlands ;
† September 10, 1945 in Colorado
Springs ) was a Dutch cellist , gambist and
music teacher. Philip Abas was born in Amsterdam in 1886 as the sixth of seven
children of diamond cutter Meijer Abraham Abas (1855–1921) and his wife Rachel
Salomon Rodrigues de Miranda (1856–1937). On April 16, 1908 he married
in Brighton three
years younger than Englishwoman Beatrice Eleanor Sanderson, daughter one candle puller . The
first daughter Isobel Rodrigues Abas was born in 1909, followed in 1912 by
Beatrice Frances Abas In
September 1914, the family traveled from Liverpool to New York on
board the RMS Olympic , as Abas was
going to perform a number of times there. During this stay, Abas' wife
became pregnant for the third time. Since she wanted to give birth to the
child with her family in England, she went with her two daughters on May 1,
1915 in New York on board the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania ,
which was supposed to arrive in Liverpool a week later. However, on May 7,
the ship was sunk by a German submarine . 1200
people were killed, including Beatrice Abas and the two children. In the same
year Abas married Janet Thomson Levens for the second time, with whom he
settled in Detroit (Michigan). Their
son, Philip Robert Abas, was born in New York in 1918. Philip Abas studied at
the Conservatory in Amsterdam with Isaäc
Mossel (1870–1923) and graduated from there. At the age of 17 he was solo
cellist in Aachen. He then lived in London. Here he gave
several concerts as 1904 in the Queen's Hall and
in June 1906 in Steinway Hall in London, in which he op the Rococo Variations
in A major. 33 by Tchaikovsky recited. Among other
things, he played with the conductor Henry Wood . 1907
Abas was the first cellist in the Brighton Municipal Orchestra.
From October 1907 to May 1908 he made his first concert tour through Canada and
the United States. For the next three years he was the first cellist in
the orchestras of Nice , Aix-les-Baines and Biarritz . During
this time he has played with Vincent d'Indy . From 1913 he lived
in Bournemouth. Until 1916 he was a member of the Bournemouth Winter Garden Symphony . Abas
gave concerts in England until August 1916, so on August 2, 1916 at the
Devonshire Park Theater in Eastbourne. He then emigrated to the United
States. In the season 1916/1917 Abas was cellist on the first desk of the Philadelphia Orchestra In
September 1918 he was introduced as a new member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra . In
December 1918, he received this operation during Detroit Symphony Orchestra presented. On
15 December 1918 he has performed as principal cellist with the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch the first cello
concerto by Camille Saint-Saëns . 1918-1919 he
played in the Rivoli Theater Orchestra on Broadway in New York
City. Until 1925 he was the first cellist of the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra and, alongside the violinists Ilya Scholnik, William Grafing King and
the violist Clarence Evans, later Herman Kolodkin, a member of the Detroit
Symphony String Quartet, which was complemented by the harpist
Ostrowska to the Detroit Detroit Symphonique Ensemble . In
1926 he became a lecturer in the cello department of the Miami
Conservatory. In September 1928 he became head of the cello department
and the chamber music department at the Michigan State Institute of
Music at Michigan State University. Abas also took over the
management of the cello department at Michigan State College. On January
12, 1929 he married the pianist and harpsichordist Vivian Trivette Parke. Their
son Leonard Parke studied with Abas in Detroit cello. Together they performed,
complemented by other musicians, as the Philip Abas Ensemble. In this
context, Abas also played the viola da gamba in addition to the
cello. They often wore historical costumes at their concerts. During
this time Abas gave concerts in Kansas and Nebraska. In the 1930s he taught
at the Kansas State Teachers College at Emporia, Kansas. In the 1940s he settled
in Santa Barbara , California. Here
he conducted the Tri-County Chorus. A son died in World War II . Abas
died of a myocardial infarction in Colorado
Springs on September 10, 1945 . The cellists Marcus Adeney ,
Wynn van Cronk, Arthur Bachmann and Ione Bryce were his students.