Lazar Gosman, born on May 27, 1926, in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, was a violinist who made significant contributions to classical music. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1949 with highest honors under Mikhail Pitkus and joined the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra as concertmaster. In the 1950s and 1970s, Gosman taught at the Rimsky-Korsakov Music School and led the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra for 17 years, recording over 38 albums featuring works by Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten. After emigrating to the United States in 1977, he became concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and founded the Tchaikovsky Chamber Orchestra in 1979, which gained international recognition through the documentary "A Musical Passage". Gosman later served as a professor at Stony Brook University until his retirement. He passed away on June 8, 2019, in New York.
