PHILADELPHIA, Nov 17 – Isadore Granoff, a Ukrainian immigrant who started teaching violin lessons as a teen-ager and built a famed music school in Philadelphia, has died.
Granoff died in his sleep Nov. 11 at his home in Philadelphia. He was 99.
Granoff taught American music greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane during more than a half-century at the Granoff School of Music.
“You could hear the singers warming up, the guitars playing, the violins, everything going at once,» said Carmine Gagliardi, a Philadelphia area violin teacher who started taking lessons from Granoff when she was 8. “It was an atmosphere of art.”
Some of his neighbors apparently found it an atmosphere of noise, and once filed a nuisance complaint against Granoff. Two hundred World War II veterans who studied music there marched to the City Hall Annex in his defense.
Granoff taught both amateurs and professionals, and persuaded other studio owners to teach for him. His students went on to become prominent players of classical music, jazz, swing, big band and Latin sounds. Some performed on television in its early days.
Granoff sold the school in 1970, and later stepped down from the board of directors, renouncing the new owner’s promotional tactics.
“I loved that whole school for so many years,” he told the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in 1973. “I gave it 54 years of my life. But now I won’t even step upstairs there.”
Granoff is survived by several nieces and nephews.
