Joseph Rumshinsky

Who was Joseph Rumshinsky?

Joseph Rumshinsky, Jewish composer born near Vilna in Lithuania. Rumshinsky - with Sholom Secunda, Alexander Olshanetsky, and Abraham Ellstein - is considered one of the "big four" of American Yiddish theater.

His mother taught singing to local singers and badkhonim. Rumshinsky was sent as a child to study with a chazn. At the age of eight he was called "Yoshke der notn-freser" at the music school where he studied piano. He traveled until 1894 with various Hazzans. It was in Grodno that he first saw Yiddish theater; he then joined the chorus of Kaminska's traveling troup until his voice changed in 1896, at which point he became choir director for a chazn named Rabinovitch. His first composition was a piano waltz which became very popular in Vilna, where it was published.

In 1897 he became choir director for Borisov's Russian opera/operetta; in 1888 he conducted a full production of Goldfaden's Bar Kokhba. In 1899, in Lódz, he was hired as conductor of the new Hazomir Choral Society, studying and arranging folksongs as well as Haydn, Handel, and Mendelsohn oratorios. He studied with the Polish musician Henryk Meltzer and at the Warsaw Conservatory.