Speaking of local boys who make good, consider Harold Greenberg, eighteen years old, whose triumph will come Sunday at Town Hall where he will make his concert debut.
Harold is an orphan. In the face of hardship and adversity he has gained recognition as one of the most promising musicians at the New York Schools of Music, which is sponsoring his first appearance in its twenty-fourth annual concert.
Reared in the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum, he plays the trumpet, and Arthur Cremin, director of the music institution, predicts that “Harold will eventually be one of the concert field’s leading cornetists.”
When smiling good-natured Harold, with wavy brown hair and twinkling grey-blue eyes, appears on the stage of Town Hall Sunday evening, he will not be self-conscious, stage-struck or otherwise embarrassed, for when he plays his instrument nothing else matters.
As early as 1929 Harold won a gold medal in the Grade A advanced trumpet contest conducted by the New York Music Week Association, after a series of elimination contests embracing the five boroughs had taken place. Grade B-the highest category-silver medal was awarded to him the following year. Next time he entered Grade B competition in 1933, the gold medal was his.
Two years ago Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Solomon of the Bronx visited the orphan asylum. As soon as they met Harold they were captivated by the boy’s manner, and a year later, with three daughters and a son of their own, they adopted him. Harold is quite enthusiastic about his new family and feels thoroughly at home there. It is the first and only family environment he has known since he can recall. The Solomons are proud of him as a son, too.
Realizing that he did not, despite acquiring a loving family, fall into the lap of luxury, Harold determined to be self-supporting. Fortune played into his hands. Last year the orphan asylum band was playing in the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities Broadcast. The “between the act encores” were assigned to Harold, who impressed the announcer, Murray Liberman. Liberman is also a pharmacist and when he learned that the youthful musician was seeking work, he offered Harold a job in the drug store where he is now working.
After the day’s work, Harold goes to the music school to practice.
His teachers and fellow-students are proud of his accomplishments, and the boys from the asylum are planning to present him with a token of their esteem. Many of them will be on hand at Harold’s first rectal.
Harold makes light of his obstacles and handicaps, and prefers to discuss his interests which, on the whole, are about the same as those of any other normal boy of his age. If he were not pursuing a musical career, his next best choice would be electrical engineering.
In the Brooklyn institution he played baseball, handball, basketball, and rose to senior patrol leader in the Boy Scout troop of which he is now the honorary member.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
