Sol Hurok

Sol Hurok (Solomon Isaievich Hurok; born Solomon Izrailevich Gurkov, Russian Соломон Израилевич Гурков; April 9, 1888 – March 5, 1974) was a 20th-century American impresario.

Biography

Hurok was born in Pogar, Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire (in present-day Bryansk Oblast, Russia) in 1888, and moved to the United States in 1906, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1914.

During Hurok's long career,S. Hurok Presents managed many performing artists, including Marian Anderson, Irina Arkhipova, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Feodor Chaliapin, Van Cliburn, Isadora Duncan, Michel Fokine, Margot Fonteyn, Emil Gilels, Horacio Gutiérrez, Daniel Heifetz, Jerome Hines, Isa Kremer, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, David Oistrakh, Anna Pavlova, Jan Peerce, Andrés Segovia, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Galina Vishnevskaya, Efrem Zimbalist, and many others.

In 1935, Rubinstein introduced Hurok to singer Marian Anderson, who retained Hurok as her manager for the rest of her career. A few years later, with Walter White of the NAACP and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Hurok was instrumental in persuading U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange Anderson's Easter Sunday open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939.