Louis Gruenberg
Louis Gruenberg was an American composer, film composer, and pianist. He was born in Brest-Litovsk to violinist Abram Greenberg and Clara Kantorovich, and moved to the United States with his parents at the age of two.
From the age of eight, he studied piano at the National Conservatory of America with Adele Margulis. Between 1904 and 1908, he studied composition with Friedrich Ernst Koch and piano with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin. He made his concert debut in 1912 with Busoni conducting, and also studied at the Vienna Conservatory from 1912 to 1917. Before 1914, he performed as a pianist both solo and in ensembles.
After returning to the United States in 1919, he wrote the symphonic poem The Hill of Dreams, which attracted notice from professional musicians and led him to focus more on composition. He was one of the organizers of the American Composers' League in 1923. In works from the 1920s, he drew on American musical folklore, including African American music, and used jazz material in pieces such as The Daniel Jazz (1925), for tenor and eight instruments.
His opera The Emperor Jones, based on Eugene O'Neill's play, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1933 and received significant attention; Gruenberg was awarded the Bispham Memorial Medal for it. His operas also included The Witch of Brocken and Jack and the Beanstalk. His other works included five symphonies, the Dance Rhapsody, Variations on a Pastoral Theme, piano and violin concertos, string quartets, piano quintets, and violin-and-piano jazzettes. He also wrote film scores, including those for All the King's Men, Arch of Triumph, An American Romance, and The Fight for Life. From 1947, he was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.