Loesser, Arthur
Loesser, Arthur
Loesser, Arthur, esteemed American pianist, teacher, and writer on music, half-brother of Frank (Henry) Loesser; b. N.Y., Aug. 26, 1894; d. Cleveland, Jan. 4, 1969. He studied with Stojowski and Goetschius at the Inst. of Musical Art in N.Y. He made his debut in Berlin (1913). He first played in N.Y. in 1916, and after touring the Orient and Australia (1920–21), he appeared widely in the U.S. In 1926 he was appointed a prof. of piano at the Cleveland Inst. of Music. In 1943 he was commissioned in the U.S. Army as an officer in the Japanese intelligence dept.; mastered the language and, after the war, gave lectures in Japanese in Tokyo; was the first American musician in uniform to play for a Japanese audience (1946). He publ. Humor in American Song (N.Y., 1943) and an entertaining vol., Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (N.Y., 1954).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire