| MARJORIE TYRE SYKES, 1910-2003 It was Auburn’s great good fortune when, in 1961, harpist Marjorie Tyre married Auburn University art professor Maltby Sykes and moved to Alabama. Over a 30 year career, Marjorie shared stages with many of the musical giants of the 20th century---Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy, Toscanini, George Szell, Leonard Bernstein, Jascha Heifetz, Jose Iturbi, and all The Met legends of the era, including Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Birgit Nilsson, Rise Stevens, Jan Peerce, Richard Tucker, Jerome Hinds and others. Leaving all that to come and live among us, Marjorie Sykes now began to pour her prodigious talent, intelligence, and energy into the musical life of the southeast. |
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| Previous Seasons |
In her childhood Philadelphia, Marjorie began playing piano at six and harp at nine. Harpist and composer Carlos Salzedo first heard her play in 1928 and dubbed her, “ my future child”. At 19 she was admitted to Curtis Institute and became his student. At age 22 she was named to the Philadelphia Orchestra by Leopold Stokowski and thus began a great adventure in the orchestra called by New York Times Music critic Harold Schonberg “probably the greatest virtuoso orchestra of all time”. In 1937 Marjorie married Robert McGinnis, the orchestra’s principal clarinetist. A daughter, Barbara, who now lives in Auburn, was born to them. WW II called Robert to the Navy Band in 1941 and Marjorie made a change in 1945, joining WOR-Mutual Broadcasting in New York. It meant a national audience 52 weeks a year, everything from Opera to jazz---she called it “too good to refuse.” While there, she was invited to join the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, but was having too much fun at WOR and turned them down. In 1952 she did join the Met: 24 operas a season, sometimes 7 performances a week, 6-8 week tours each spring. Robert McGinnis’ own musical odyssey had led him in other directions than had Marjorie’s, and they had divorced. But they remained friends, and it was he who suggested to Leonard Bernstein in 1959 that she be hired for a 10 week summer tour of the NY Philharmonic, to 26 European countries and the Soviet Union. Marjorie’s years at Curtis had launched more than a musical career, it brought her a friendship which now came full circle. At the Birmingham home of fellow student Alice Chalifoux, Marjorie had met Maltby Sykes. They stayed friends, corresponding occasionally over the years. He now reentered her life as a suitor, and they were married in New York on Christmas Eve of 1961. Another thread of this story coming full circle just now in 2003, is the installation in Auburn’s new museum of a painting of Marjorie’s teacher Carlos Salzedo and the Barrere Trio, done in Mexico in 1936 by the young Maltby Sykes. Marjorie’s Auburn years were scarcely less busy than her first 50 years had been. She performed as a solo harpist with regional orchestras; she taught privately and joined the AU music faculty. She founded and headed the Sewanee Summer Music Center in Tennessee; she formed a harp-flute-cello trio. She kept the Harp Department going at Florida State, as interim instructor in 1967-68; she was actively involved in the American Harp Society; and served on the board of Eastman School of Music. All along, in her spare time, Marjorie played serious golf. And it is because of Marjorie that Auburn music lovers have, to date, heard 126 performances of some of the greatest music the world has ever known, played by many of the world’s most distinguished chamber groups. Marjorie decided that Auburn needed a chamber music society, and in 1965 marshaled her friends and colleagues to bring this bold project to reality. We hope we do her honor with the continuation of this accomplishment, and we lovingly dedicate this season to her memory. We, and the music world at large, are greatly in her debt. |