Olga Zilboorg


Olga Zilboorg was an American cellist and music educator, born in Mexico City. She was a founding member of the North Shore Pro Musica chamber ensemble, and a longtime cello teacher on Long Island.

Early life

Olga Zilboorg was born and raised in Mexico City, one of the three daughters of James M. Zilboorg and Eugenia Helfman Zilboorg. Her parents were Jewish immigrants to the United States, originally from Kiev; her father was an industrial engineer. Her uncle was psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg. She began her cello studies in Mexico with the Hungarian refugee Imre Hartmann. She attended the University of Kansas and the Manhattan School of Music, where she was a student of Bernard Greenhouse. She pursued further studies in Italy with André Navarra and composer Luigi Dallapiccola. While at Kansas, she won the Naftzger Award, which offered a cash prize from a promising young artist and a guest solo with the Wichita Symphony.

Career

"Miss Zilboorg's tone is full and appealing, particularly in the romantic, lyrical parts," commented one reporter in 1954. After graduating from the Manhattan School in 1957 she joined the St. Louis Symphony, where she was one its first woman members. While in St. Louis she toured the United States with the St. Louis Trio. In 1959, she competed in the Pablo Casals Second International Cello Contest. In 1962 she left the St. Louis Symphony to pursue a solo career. In that year she was a contestant in the Second International Tchaikovsky Contest. In 1962-1963 she gave debut recitals at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Brahms-Saal at the Musikverein in Vienna and Carnegie Recital Hall in New York. In these concerts and later in her career she championed Dallapiccola's Ciaccona, Intermezzo e Adagio for solo cello. She was in the pit orchestra for the original Broadway run of Hello, Dolly! in 1964. After 1965 she devoted much of her time to teaching cello privately on Long Island, later joining the faculty of the Stony Brook University Pre-College Music Program. She was a founding member of North Shore Pro Musica chamber ensemble in 1981, and performed with the Long Island Philharmonic. In 2009, she was honored with a resolution in the New York State Senate, recognizing her as "as recipient of the Visual and Performing Arts Award by the Town of Brookhaven Office of Women's Services."

Personal life

Olga Zilboorg married Stony Brook University engineering professor Thomas F. Irvine Jr. in 1965. The Irvines had a daughter, Tatiana Irvine, and a son, Thomas A. Irvine, who is a music academic at the University of Southampton in the UK. Olga Zilboorg died in 2017, aged 83 years. Some of her family correspondence is in the James and Eugenia Zilboorg papers at Yale University.