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A part of me died today. Rather, it died about a year ago, but I didn’t really know it until today. For the past year or so, I’ve been thiking a lot about my old violin teacher (and musical mentor), Dr. Andrew Galos. Today, out of the blue, I decided to see if I could find any news about him on the Internet. I figured there’d be some kind of mention of him somewhere. (Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t do this before.) I ran a quick search, found out that he was in Washington, with this caption:

http://www.netace.com/importuno/testimonials.htm

Dr. Andrew Galos is one of this country’s outstanding violinists. He holds a Masters degree from both the Julliard School of Music and Columbia University. In addition to the Masters degrees, he also earned a doctorate from Columbia. Presently Dr. Galos is performing on tour and resides in Kirkland, Washington.

(This, of course, doesn’t go to his performing with Jascha Heifetz or Toscanini in Philadelphia.) I continued my search when I found this line:

“In Memory of Andrew Galos.” (here)

Could it be? I had to be sure. I looked around and found a couple of pages in relation to the Chautauqua Music Festival and…

http://www.josephbrent.com/WorldTour0405SF.htm

On Sunday, June 20th, my teacher and inspiration Dr. Andrew Galos died peacefully in Seattle, with his wife Ruthie and son Michael by his side.

No doubut about it, that was him. (There was a picture and everything.) That’s when my eyes began to well up. I looked around for more information when I found this page, made by his son, Michael. It has a few pictures, as well as some music, so I recommend taking a look at it.

From that point on, my mind wouldn’t stop. I could go on to write story after story about lessons I learned from Dr. Galos, most of which weren’t so much music related as they were life related, including the importance of perseverence, and of patience. But as far as the stories are concerned, I’ll write them, but they’ll take me a while. (There are a lot of them.) For now, I’ll try to contact Mrs. Galos, and I’ll simply end this “obituary” with this:

In Memory of
Dr. Andrew Galos

February 18th, 1918 — June 20th, 2004

Teacher. Mentor. Inspiration.

Thank you, Dr. Galos. I’ll never forget you or what you taught me.

You can listen to some of his music here:

Swiss Lullaby (WMA)
The Waves of Lake Balaton (WMA)

These were two of his signature pieces.

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