Anshel Brusilow

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Anshel Brusilow (born Anshel Brusilovsky on 14 August 1928) is an American conductor and violinist.

Anshel Brusilow began his violin study at the age of five and entered the Curtis Institute of Music when he was eleven. He attended the Philadelphia Musical Academy and at sixteen was the youngest conducting student ever accepted by Pierre Monteux. A 4th prize winner of the prestigious Jacques Thibaud Marguerite Long Violin Competition in 1949 [2], he performed as a soloist with numerous major orchestras in the United States. He subsequently served four years as associate concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra and seven years as concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra under famed conductor Eugene Ormandy. Some famous recordings to come from the orchestra during this time with Brusilow as soloist included Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Rimsky-Korsakow's Scheherazade, and Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.

During his time in Philadelphia, Brusilow founded the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia and recorded several albums with the group under the RCA Victor label. In 1970, Brusilow left Philadelphia for Dallas, TX where he was appointed executive director and conductor of the Dallas Symphony. He led the orchestra's first tours of Central and South America and started the pops series that the orchestra still performs to this day. The most notable recording from this period was DALLASOUND, a pops music album featuring several arrangements by Bill Holcombe.

Anshel Brusilow has been Director of Orchestral Studies at the North Texas State University (later the University of North Texas) College of Music from 1973 to 1982, and from 1989 to the present. Between 1982 and 1989 he held a similar post at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He has been the music director of the Richardson Symphony Orchestra in Richardson, Texas, since 1992.

Brusilow is slated to retire from his professorship at North Texas at the end of the 2007–2008 academic year. A $1,000,000 endowment, which includes the creation of a faculty position, the Anshel Brusilow Chair in Orchestral Studies, is being established in his honor.^[1]