Dorothy DeLay 1917–2002

The string teacher Dorothy DeLay will be remembered less for her own gifts as a performing musician as for the glittering roster of pupils she cultivated, taught, inspired and guided in every aspect of their careers. These included Itzhak Perlman, Cho-Liang Lin, Shlomo Mintz, Nigel Kennedy, Sarah Chang, Mark Kaplan, Midori, and Gil Shaham. She also numbered among her success stories violinists from the Juilliard, Tokyo, Cleveland, American, Takács, Mendelssohn, Blair, Fine Arts and Vermeer String Quartets, as well as concertmasters and leaders of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philadelphia, the Royal Concertgebouw and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. The axes of her activities were the Julliard School, where she taught from 1948, and the Aspen Music School in Colorado, where she presided every summer from 1970, although she delivered master classes worldwide. Her numerous awards included doctorates from Oberlin College, Columbia University, Michigan State University, Duquesne University, Brown University and the University of Colorado, a Fellowship from the Royal College of Music, the National Medal of Arts, and Japan’s Order of the Sacred Treasure. A biography by Barbara Lourie Sand, Teaching genius: Dorothy DeLay and the making of a musician, was published in 2000.

Dorothy DeLay: born Kansas, 31 March 1917; died Upper Nyack, 24 March 2002.