Fabien Sevitzky

Fabien Sevitzky (September 29, 1891 in Vyshny Volochyok – February 3, 1967 in Athens) was a Russian-born American conductor. He was the nephew of renowned double-bass virtuoso and longtime Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitzky.^[1]

Sevitzky became music director of the

He married harpist Mary Spaulding in 1959, and the couple subsequently moved to Miami to take up faculty positions at the University of Miami while his wife also gave private harp lessons. He guest-conducted the University's orchestra soon after his arrival, and became its permanent conductor in 1963. He championed the music of William Grant Still, from whom he commissioned works including Threnody: In Memory of Jan Sibelius,^[7] and conducted the premiere of Still's opera Highway 1, U.S.A. in 1960.^[8] He was music director of the Greater Miami Philharmonic Orchestra from 1956 to 1962,^[9] and died suddenly in 1967.

His wife, who later became Mary Spaulding Portanova, survived him.

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