Edward Joseph Collins

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Edward Joseph Collins (1886-1951) was an American pianist, conductor and composer of Romantic classical music. Collins was born in Joliet, Illinois. He studied with Rudolf Ganz in Chicago and in 1906 went with Ganz to Berlin, where he enrolled in the Hochschule für Musik in performance and composition under Max Bruch and Humperdinck. Upon graduation, he made a successful concert piano debut in Berlin, returned to the United States in 1912 and toured with the contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink. He then was an assistant conductor at the Century Opera Company in New York and the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. In World War I, Collins served in the Army as an interpreter and entertained the troops as pianist. After the war he returned to Chicago, joined the faculty of Chicago Musical College. There he met and married a young voice student, Frieda Mayer, daughter of the meatpacking magnate, Oscar Mayer.

Edward Joseph Collins composed ten major orchestral works (including a symphony, two overtures and three suites), three piano concertos, Hymn to the Earth (for orchestra, choir, and solo voices), several chamber works, 15 songs for voice and piano, and more than a dozen piano solo and duo scores.