Bernard Krainis

Who is Bernard Krainis?

Bernard Krainis was a musician and co-founder of New York Pro Musica. He played recorder and studied with Erich Katz.

Bernard Krainis, a noted recorder player and a founding member of the New York Pro Musica Antiqua and the Aston Magna Foundation for Music, two pioneering ensembles for the performance of early music on period instruments, died on Aug. 18, 2000 at his home in Great Barrington, Mass. He was 75.

The cause of death was cancer, his family said.

Mr. Krainis was born in New Brunswick, N.J., on Dec. 28, 1924, the son of Abraham and Rose Sachs Krainis. During World War II he served in the Army, stationed in India with the Seventh Bomber Group. He attended Denver University. But it was his studies at New York University, where he was a student of the medieval and Renaissance music scholar Gustave Reese, that determined the future course of his life.

In 1952, along with the conductor and musicologist Noah Greenberg, Mr. Krainis formed the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, which brought wider public attention to early music and was in the forefront of the period-instrument movement. Mr. Krainis performed with the group until 1959. In the 1960s he organized and toured with his own ensembles: the Krainis Baroque Trio, the Krainis Baroque Ensemble and the Krainis Consort, becoming one of the few recorder players at the time to have a prominent solo career.