Mordecai Bauman


Mordecai Bauman was an American baritone.

Biography

Mordecai Hirsch Bauman was born on March 2, 1912 to Allen and Minnie Bauman in the Bronx, New York City. He attended James Monroe High School, then was granted a fellowship to the Juilliard Graduate School of Music during his freshman year at Columbia College in 1930, making him the first and only student to attend both institutions concurrently. He studied voice with Francis Rogers at Juilliard.
He married Irma Commanday. Together, they started the Indian Hill Art Workshop in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Indian Hill was the first summer school in the arts for high school students. It was open until 1978.
During the Bach Tercentenary in 1985, he led a tour to the Bach Festival in Leipzig. A few years later, he completed a documentary, "The Stations of Bach", in East Germany. The documentary was funded by the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities and broadcast nationally on PBS in 1990. CUNY TV now owns the documentary and broadcasts it annually on Bach's birthday, March 21.
In 2006, Mordecai and Irma published their memoir, titled, . He died in 2007 at the age of 95.