Solomon Kutsovsky was a Soviet and Russian violinist, conductor, and teacher. He was born in 1923 in Verkhnedniprovsk, Ukraine, and died in 2015. He became a professor in 1990.
In 1941, Kutsovsky graduated from the special ten-year music school attached to the Odesa Conservatory, where he studied violin with Pyotr Stolyarsky. From 1945 to 1950, he studied violin at the Moscow Conservatory with Abram Yampolsky and Yuri Yankelevich, and chamber ensemble with Alexander Goedicke.
After graduating, he played in the Magnitogorsk Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and taught at music colleges in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk, and Novosibirsk. From 1953 to 1965, he lived in Petrozavodsk, performed as a soloist with an ensemble, and conducted the Symphony Orchestra of Karelian Republican Radio and Television. He also recorded works by local composers for radio.
From 1967, Kutsovsky taught in the string instruments department at the Rostov Musical Pedagogical Institute. He became its department head in 1969 and held the post until 1997; in 1990, he became a professor at the Rostov Conservatory. He founded and led the student chamber orchestra Renaissance until 2005. He also wrote methodological works, served on the Russian Ministry of Culture’s Methodological Council, and chaired or served on juries at regional and international violin competitions.
Kutsovsky was named Honored Artist of the Karelian ASSR in 1964 and Honored Worker of Arts of the RSFSR in 1989. From 2005, he lived in Erfurt, Germany, for family reasons.