In memoriam: David Zauder (1928-2013)

David Zauder spent thirty-nine years as trumpeter, rising from second to first cornetist, and eleven years as assistant personnel manager followed by twenty-five years as personnel manager with the Cleveland Orchestra. He was the longest-serving trumpeter in its history.

Zauder was raised in Krakow, Poland. His father was a tailor who drummed at a Yiddish theater, and his mother was a seamstress who made costumes for the same theater. Zauder survived concentration camps during World War II, spending five years at Sachenhausen, Flossenburg, Plaszow and Auschwitz camps where he was forced to tend a crematorium.

When he was fifteen, the liberated Zauder escaped a displaced person's camp and talked his way into odd jobs at a U.S. Army camp. With a soldier’s help, he contacted relatives in the US and emigrated to Detroit in 1946, where he first lived with his aunt, his cousin and her husband. He played in the Detroit Concert Band and studied both trumpet and English with its director and Leonard B. Smith. He also studied with Harry Glantz in New York where he played first trumpet for the New York Military Academy. He enlisted in the Army and played with a West Point band for four years. He became an American citizen after his honorable discharge. He was then first trumpet with the Boston Pops and also played for Broadway shows, commercial recordings, and television.

Zauder earned a bachelor's degree at Wayne State University. He also holds degrees in business administration and humanities from Case Western Reserve University.

In 1958, Zauder auditioned at Severance Hall for the Cleveland Orchestra. George Szell said Zauder had no control over soft dynamics and should go home to practice them. A month later, Szell called, gave him a second trial, and hired him. Ten years later, Zauder became the orchestra's first cornet. In addition to his duties in the orchestra, Zauder helped create the Blossom Festival Concert Band in 1968. He played featured solos in twenty of the band's July 4 concerts. He also taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1978 to 1995. Former students include Ryan Anthony. In 1997, he retired at the age of sixty-five. That year, he won the orchestra's second annual distinguished service award. Executive Director Thomas W. Morris wrote in May 1997, “Overstating the impact David Zauder has had on The Cleveland Orchestra would be impossible.” Michael Sachs, the orchestra's principal trumpeter said, "David was truly the glue in the institution... He was phenomenal in his attention to detail, his thoroughness of preparation, his complete understanding of how to make everyone around him sound better."

Zauder died Tuesday, April 16, at home in Pine, Colorado, where he'd lived the past six years with his daughter, Karen Zauder Brass, who is president of a Holocaust-awareness and anti-bullying program that talks about her father's experience in the Holocaust and as a survivor. He was cremated by request, telling his family that he was no better than comrades cremated at the concentration camps.

Sources: Cleveland.com article by Grant Segall (http://www.cleveland.com/obituaries/index.ssf/2013/04/david_zauder_was_first_corneti.html.), Standupsters.com

Photo source: Standupsters.com