Tag #127763 - Interview #89861 (Dan Mizrahy)

Around New Year’s Eve 1947 I met Edmond Deda at a party in the house of the Carasso family, on Barbu Delavrancea Street. [Edmond Deda (b. 1921): Romanian composer, conductor, pianist, and vocal soloist; he composed music for variety shows and films.] The rest came by itself: met me, liked me, hired me! The following day or the following week – I can’t remember which – I started to work for his conservatoire, ‘The American Music Conservatoire’. Deda’s school was in the house of Theodor Rogalschi, on General Manu Street, which later became Lt. Lemnea Street, then changed its name back to Gen. Manu Street after 1989, where Deda had rented two rooms and a half, plus a lobby. The teaching body was very scarce – only three to four teachers. There was an old man from Cernauti, Salter, who taught harmony, and was later replaced by Ion Dumitrescu who, if I remember correctly, also taught ‘theory and solfeggios’; Sandu Fieraru, a jazz pianist, taught the history of jazz; Deda, a jack of all trades, taught singing and jazz (vocal and piano), was a corepetitor, and played with Fieraru in parallel. Finally, I was ‘the classical piano teacher’ – a bombastic title which actually meant that I had to teach the ABCs of music. From a material point of view, the money I earned there meant nothing. Inflation was booming; prices changed from one day to the other and a streetcar ticket cost 30,000 lei. So it’s understandable why the tuition fees cashed at the beginning of the academic year couldn’t cover the teachers’ salaries for the following nine months, not to mention the utilities or the cost of heating by firewood.