Wiłkomirski, Józef
Wiłkomirski Alfred, *20 January 1873 Azów (on the Don river), †30 July 1950 Łódź, Polish violinist, violist, chamber musician, teacher and music activist. He learned to play the violin with K. Gorski in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) and J. Hřímali in Moscow, then he studied at the higher music and drama school of the Moscow Philharmonic Society in the violin class of W. Beziekirski and with G. Konius and S. Kruglikov (music theory). After his studies (diploma in 1897), he devoted himself to teaching and chamber music, playing mainly the viola. In 1906, he was a co-founder (with B. Jaworski) and lecturer of the People’s Conservatory in Moscow and also taught violin and choral conducting at the Synod School. In 1917–19, he ran a music school in Batumi. From 1919, he was active in Poland; in 1920–26, he was the director of the Music Society school and the organizer of musical life in Kalisz, in 1926–27 the director of the Music Institute in Lublin. In 1927–29, he lived in Warsaw and played the viola in the Warsaw String Quartet, founded by J. Kamiński. In the fall of 1929, he moved to Łódź, and until 1939, he taught violin and theoretical subjects at the H. Kijeńska-Dobkiewiczowa Conservatory, at the Teaching Seminary and the Free University, and the music school in Pabianice. In 1945–50, he worked at the PŚSM in Łódź. In 1975, the Kalisz Musical Society was named after him. Alfred Wiłkomirski’s children from his first marriage to Aniela, née Kułassowska (†1921), were Kazimierz, Michał and Maria, and from his second marriage (1925) to Dorota, née Temkin – Józef and Wanda. Dorota Wiłkomirska (1901–1986) taught piano privately before 1939 and founded the Musicians-Educators’ Cooperative and the Association of Social Music Centres in Łódź. From 1958, she was the inspector of music centres at the Warsaw Music Society.