Jacob Avshalomov was born on March 28,1919, in Tsingtao, China.
19 Facts About Jacob Avshalomov
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Jacob Avshalomov's father was Aaron Avshalomov, the Siberian-born composer known for "oriental musical materials cast in western forms and media"; his mother was from San Francisco.
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At eight years old Jacob Avshalomov visited Portland from China with his parents and were guests of Jacques Gershkovitch for several months in 1927.
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Aaron Avshalomov had become friends with Gershkovitch in the Orient.
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Jacob Avshalomov graduated from British and American schools before age fifteen, then worked as a factory supervisor in Tientsin, Shanghai and Beijing over a span of four years.
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Jacob Avshalomov was active in sports and won the diving championship of North China.
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In 1937, Jacob Avshalomov assisted his father in Shanghai with ballet production and working on scores.
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Jacob Avshalomov then enlisted with a British volunteer corps following Japan's invasion of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and eventually returned to the United States with his mother in December 1937.
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Jacob Avshalomov spent a year in Los Angeles studying with Ernst Toch, followed by two years in Portland, Oregon to attend Reed College.
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Jacob Avshalomov then spent two years at the Eastman School of Music to study composition and orchestration with Bernard Rogers.
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Jacob Avshalomov served on the National Humanities Council from 1968 to 1974 and the Music Planning Section of the National Arts Endowment from 1977 to 1979.
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Jacob Avshalomov led the ensemble on their first international tour in 1970.
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Jacob Avshalomov retired in 1995 after an estimated 640 concerts and 10,000 auditions.
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Jacob Avshalomov wrote "The Oregon", a symphony commemorating the centennial anniversary of the US state of Oregon, in 1959.
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One main characteristic of Jacob Avshalomov's compositions are the radical change of time-signatures from measure to measure.
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Jacob Avshalomov received the Ditson Fellowship in Composition following World War II and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1951.
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In 1994 Jacob Avshalomov was named a Portland First Citizen, an honor established by the Portland Realty Board in 1928 to recognize "civic achievements and business leadership within the community".
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In 2011 Jacob Avshalomov was one of three honorees to be recognized by the Portland Center for the Performing Arts Foundation for outstanding contributions to Portland's art community.
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Jacob Avshalomov died in his sleep at his Portland, Oregon home in 2013.