Henry Sopkin (20 October 1903 New York – 1 March 1988

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

) was an American conductor. He founded, and for 21 years, from 1945 to 1966, led the

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The ASO's main concert venue is Atlanta Symphony Hall in the Woodruff Arts Center. History Though earlier organizations bearing the same name date b ...

. Before that, he had been a long-standing pedagogue at the

American Conservatory of Music The American Conservatory of Music (ACM) was a major American school of music founded in Chicago in 1886 by John James Hattstaedt (1851–1931). The conservatory was incorporated as an Illinois non-profit corporation. It developed the Conservato ...

in Chicago, where he taught conducting and led the Conservatory Symphony Orchestra.

Career highlights

Sopkin studied the violin as a youth and entered the

in Chicago, where he grew up, earning both bachelor's and master's degrees in music. In the 1920s and 1930s, he taught at the American Conservatory, at Chicago area high schools, and at Woodrow Wilson College before the Atlanta Music Club hired him in 1944. Under the patronage of the Atlanta Music Club, founded in 1915, the Atlanta Symphony emerged in 1947 from a successful Atlanta Youth Orchestra conducted by Sopkin. When he retired in 1966, the Symphony became fully professional. His son, Charles Sopkin (1932-1994) was an author, editor and publisher.

External links

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra websiteHenry Sopkin Collection, 1940-1975
at

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sopkin, Henry 1903 births 1988 deaths American male conductors (music) 20th-century American conductors (music) 20th-century American male musicians