Draft:David Le Vita



David Le Vita was born of parents with Russian and Austro-Hungarian origins, Le Vita grew up in Brooklyn. He gave his public debut as a pianist in 1923 at Aeolian Hall in Manhattan. A scholarship enabled him to pursue studies abroad. He graduated from Landeskonservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig (today Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy") in 1929 and enrolled in the Musicology programme at Universität Leipzig afterwards. Wilhelm Heyer had bequeathed his ample collection of Musical Instruments to the University in 1926, and in 1929 the Musikinstrumentenmuseum der Universität Leipzig was opened. Thus, Le Vita got insight in Organology and Ethnomusicology, which should be very helpful at a later moment in his career.

In 1931 he obtained a PhD degree in musicology from Universität Leipzig and soon after returned to the United States. In 1937 he married Gertrude, née Frank, and in the same year he first got in touch with the Brooklyn Museum, where he established a series entitled "Music Background Hours", mostly featuring Non-Western music in the first decade, but including Western Chamber Music and Opera at a later stage. From 1939 onwards, he gave lectures on Classical Music also for an adult audience. . The backbone of his free-lance activity was a structure called "Le Vita Studios of Music and Art".

Le Vita was hired as a member of the Museum’s Education Department in 1942, bearing the job title "musicologist". Le Vita consolidated and developed the Museum’s Music Programme that included not only lectures on instruments or music-related artworks from the Museum’s collection both for schoolchildren and adults, but also a wide range of concerts. The backbone of the concert programme was a weekly Chamber Music Series on Sunday afternoon launched in Spring 1943 which featured artists like Paul Wittgenstein, Eva Heinitz and John Corigliano. Later a series on Saturday afternoons was added, where not only professional musicians were performing but also local High School Orchestras.

From March to June 1944, Le Vita organized an «Ask the Composer» series including Henry Cowell, Béla Bartók, Virgil Thomson and Morton Gould and Paul Creston. A second set of composers in Winter/Spring 1945 featured Julius Hijman, Karl Weigl and Paul Bowles, among others. In 1947, Le Vita was appointed Director of Music Activities at the Museum. . The late 1940s saw the creation of a five-part concert for children, exclusively available to Museum members, which was held at the Museum's Sculpture Court.

In 1953, Le Vita founded the Brooklyn Museum Trio with himself as pianist, Avram Weiss as violinist, Sidney Edwards and, later, Shepard Coleman as cellist. In the same year, Le Vita launched a collaboration with the Community Opera Inc. which presented up to six operas to the audience, free of charge. In the 1950s, Le Vita also established a collaboration with John Motley who conducted the Museum’s Childrens Chorus. He retired in 1972 and moved to Florida where he spent the rest of his life.

Le Vita was presented citations for his contributions to music education by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. and he was cited in 2006 for his work by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman.