One of the foremost piano virtuosi of her time, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler reliably filled Carnegie Hall. As a “new woman” she simultaneously embraced family life and forged an independent career built around a repertoire of the German music she tirelessly championed. In this lecture, Beth Abelson Macleod, retired music librarian at Central Michigan University, reintroduces a figure long, and unjustly, overlooked by music history. Trained in Vienna, Bloomfield-Zeisler significantly advanced the development of classical music in the United States. The European-style salon in her Chicago home welcomed musicians, scientists, authors, artists, and politicians, while her marriage to attorney Sigmund Zeisler placed her at the center of a historical moment when Zeisler defended the anarchists in the 1886 Haymarket trial.

$10 per person / $8 for museum members

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This is the third in a series of three spring lectures exploring the role of Chicago women in classical music at the turn of the 20th century.

Additional dates:
March 29 - Rose Fay Thomas
April 28 - Frances Macbeth Glessner