Biography and career

Joan Field was born in Long Branch, New Jersey

Long Branch, New Jersey

Long Branch is a city in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 30,719.Long Branch was formed on April 11, 1867, as the Long Branch Commission, from portions of Ocean Township...

. She began violin studies at the age of 5. She was a pupil of Franz Kneisel

Franz Kneisel

Franz Kneisel was an American violinist and teacher of Romanian birth.Born in Bucharest, the son of a German bandmaster, he learned to play the flute, clarinet and trumpet, as well as the violin...

, Albert Spalding

Albert Spalding (violinist)

Albert Spalding was an American violinist and composer.-Biography:Spalding was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1888. His mother, Marie Boardman, was a contralto and pianist. His father, James Walter Spalding, and uncle, Hall-of-Fame baseball pitcher Albert Spalding, created the A.G...

 and Michel Piastro in the United States and spent 4 years in Paris during her teens studying with Marcel Chailley, Jacques Thibaud

Jacques Thibaud

Jacques Thibaud was a French violinist.Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the conservatory's violin prize with Pierre Monteux...

 and George Enescu

George Enescu

George Enescu was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher.-Biography:Enescu was born in the village of Liveni , Dorohoi County at the time, today Botoşani County. He showed musical talent from early in his childhood. A child prodigy, Enescu created his first musical...

 at the École Normale de Musique.

She made her debut in Town Hall in New York City in 1934. About that evening the New York Times wrote, "Miss Field's playing is that of a thoughtful, sensitive and fastidious musician." She went on to perform with major orchestras in the United States, including the American Symphony Orchestra

American Symphony Orchestra

The American Symphony Orchestra is a New York-based American orchestra founded in 1962 by Leopold Stokowski, then aged 80. Following Maestro Stokowski's departure, Kazuyoshi Akiyama was appointed Music Director of the American Symphony Orchestra from 1973-1978. Music Directors during the early...

, the Detroit Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra

Cleveland Orchestra

The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...

, the Philadelphia Orchestra

Philadelphia Orchestra

The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...

  and the Washington Symphony; and five solo performances with the New York Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...

 at Lewisohn Stadium

Lewisohn Stadium

Lewisohn Stadium was an amphitheater and athletic facility built on the campus of the City College of New York. It opened in 1915 and was demolished in 1973.-History:...

 and Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

.

In 1937 she played in recital for President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 at the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

.

During the 1940s Field was a regular on the New York City music scene. She was concertmistress for the U.S. tour of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo

Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo

Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was a ballet company created by members of the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo in 1938 after Léonide Massine and René Blum had a falling-out with the co-founder Wassily de Basil...

 during World War II, reprising that position for the original Broadway production of Brigadoon

Brigadoon

Brigadoon is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. Songs from the musical, such as "Almost Like Being in Love" have become standards....

 in 1947.

In 1944 she began a successful radio career at New York classical station WQXR

WQEW

WQEW is a Radio Disney affiliate licensed to New York City. Its transmitter is located in Maspeth, Queens. WQEW has a transmitter power of 50,000 watts and is listed as a Clear-channel station...

, writing and producing more than 200 episodes of her own performance-interview program "Notes and Quotes" on Sunday afternoons and appearing as soloist and concertmistress of the Stromberg-Carlson

Stromberg-Carlson

Stromberg-Carlson was a telecommunications equipment and electronics manufacturing company formed in 1894 as a partnership of Alfred Stromberg and Androv Carlson. Along with four other companies, it controlled the United States national supply of telephone equipment until after World War...

 string orchestra.

She made the first recording of the Charles Ives

Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

 Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano along with the 3rd Sonata with pianist Leopold Mittman. She also gave first performances of the violin concertos of Nicolai Berezowsky

Nicolai Berezowsky

Nicolai Tikhonovich Berezowsky was a Russian-born American violinist and composer.He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on May 17, 1900, graduating from the Imperial Capella with honors when he was sixteen. As a young boy singer in the chapel choir, he recalled singing for the Tsar's family and...

, Mana Zucca

Mana Zucca

Mana-Zucca was an American actress, singer, pianist and composer born in New York City.-Life:Mana-Zucca was born Augusta Zuckerman in New York City on December 25, 1885. She was a child prodigy who began composing at an early age. At the age of eight, she performed as piano soloist in the...

  and Dai-Keong Lee, and the first American performance of the Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

 Violin Sonata No. 2 in D

Violin Sonata No. 2 (Prokofiev)

Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 94 bis, was based on the composer's own Flute Sonata in D, Op. 94, written in 1942 but arranged for violin in 1943 when Prokofiev was living in Perm in the Ural Mountains, a remote shelter for Soviet artists during the Secord World War...

.

Her annual Town Hall recital in 1956 elicited this commentary in the New York Times: "Miss Field is a rare combination, an extremely facile technician who also comprehends that the task of the performer is to make music rather than to set a new record for the track. It is true that in bravura playing Miss Field is by no means found wanting; but mere technique is never allowed to get in the way of the music."

Field performed and recorded extensively in Europe during the 1950s and early 1960s, notably with ex-patriot American conductor Dean Dixon

Dean Dixon

Charles Dean Dixon was an American conductor.Dixon was born in New York City, where he later studied conducting with Albert Stoessel at the Juilliard School and Columbia University. When early pursuits of conducting engagements were stifled because of racial bias , he formed his own orchestra and...

. Her instrument during those years was a 1698 "long pattern" Stradivarius

Stradivarius

The name Stradivarius is associated with violins built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce, though this belief is controversial...

 once owned by Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...

 .

A longtime resident of Miami Beach, Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, she retired from the concert stage in 1965. She died in Miami Beach in 1988
.

Discography

On Telefunken

Telefunken

Telefunken is a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft...

:

• Dvorak Violin Concerto in a minor/ Beethoven Romances for Violin and Orchestra; Berlin Symphony, Artur Rother
  Artur Rother
  Artur Martin Rother was a German conductor who worked mainly in the opera house.He was born in Stettin, Pomerania . His father was an organist and music teacher. He studied under Hugo Kaun and other teachers. By the age of 20, in 1906, he was conducting in Wiesbaden, and was assistant conductor...
  
  , Conductor TCS 18046

• Bruch Concerto #1 in g minor/Mendelssohn Concerto in e minor; Berlin Symphony, Rudolf Albert, Conductor. 6.41308 AG and n.t. 196

• Bruch Concerto #1 in g minor/Spohr Concerto in a minor "Gesangszene"; Berlin Symphony, Rudolf Albert, Conductor. LT 6634 and TCS 18031

• Mozart Concerto #5 in A/ Mendelssohn Concerto in e minor; Berlin Symphony, Rudolf Albert, Conductor. TC 8044

On Lyrichord:

• Charles Ives Sonatas 1 and 3 for violin and piano (with Leopold Mittman). LL 17

External links