Remember
When • •
Artistic
ODYSSEY
County will most likely hear him with
the Birmingham-Bloomfield
Symphony Orchestra some time next
fall, playing concertos by Grieg and
Liszt — both in one program.
"He is a very dedicated musician, a
very capable one," said Felix Resnick,
BBSO conductor. "We just haven't
been able to pin down the date
because he is so busy doing concerts."
The Early Career
7
DIANA LIEBERMAN
Staff
he past 10 years have been
good to West Bloomfield
pianist David Syme.
He is making an excel-
lent living in music, his name has
become a household word and he has
a wife he adores.
But Syme, son of one noted Detroit-
area rabbi and brother of another, is
looking for even better times in the
21st century as he sets out to recapture
the world of classical music.
Syme returned a few weeks ago from
Prague, where he performed
Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with
the Czech National Symphony
Orchestra. In October, he toured Great
Britain with the same orchestra, play-
ing George Gershwin's Concerto in E
He performed Gershwin's Rhapsody
in Blue with the Chicago Sinfonietta
throughout Great Britain in November.
The tour included two solo recitals.
Meanwhile, Syme's fans in Oakland
Syme showed his remarkable musical tal-
ent by the time he was 3 years old, said
his older brother, Rabbi Daniel Syme of
Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township.
"David ruined my piano career,"
Rabbi Syme said with a smile. "I had
been taking piano lessons until age 13.
Then I played my first recital. It was
Beethoven's 'Fur Elise,' and I spent six
months working on it."
When the family returned from the
recital, David went to the piano and
played the whole piece by ear — per-
fectly.
"That was it," said Rabbi Syme. "I
never played piano again. He is a
genius. If we're lucky, one of us gets to
introduce him."
The brothers' parents are Rabbi M.
Robert Syme, rabbi emeritus of
Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, and
his wife, Sonia, a gifted amateur pianist.
David Syme had no serious piano les-
sons until he was 13, when he began
studying with the late Mischa Kottler, vir-
tuoso pianist with the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra. A year later, he made his first
solo appearance, playing Beethoven's First
Piano Concerto with Detroit's Mumford
High School Orchestra.
By age 18, he was performing
Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto
with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra,
the first of nine solo appearances with
the DSO.
He earned bachelor's and master's
degrees in piano performance from New
York's Juilliard School, followed by exten-
sive training, competing and performing
both in the United States and abroad.
Through the years, he received excellent
reviews for orchestral appearances and
solo recitals in New York, London,
Moscow, Vienna, Stuttgart, Mexico City,
Washington, D.C., and more.
A Turn In The Road
It was an artistically satisfying life, but
not a lucrative one.
"I would tour Europe and it was a
wonderful experience," Syme remem-
bered. "But then I would get home,
and I'd have very little money left and
all these bills to pay."
While on tour, he would sometimes
linger in lounges and restaurants, still in
his concert attire. People would ask him
to play their favorite songs and he was
gratified to find that, after all these years,
his ability to play anything by ear had not
left him. Now, he estimates he can play
5,000 songs, with more added constantly.
Since 1990, via WYUR (1310 AM),
millions of radio listeners nationwide
have enjoyed Syme's performances of
musical standards and pop favorites.
Listeners phone in their requests and,
usually, he succeeds in reproducing
that song, complete with harmony.
He does it with an amiable, folksy
quality that goes over well with easy-
listening audiences.
Syme is a popular entertainer at cor-
porate parties as well as at simchas in the
Jewish community; his appearances at
Birmingham's First Night celebration on
New Year's Eve pack the hall. In all, he
estimates he has made more than 800
guest appearances in the past 10 years.
All this has added up to a lucrative
business in self-produced compact
discs and cassette tapes, starting with
"Play It Again Syme" and including
"Jewish Music Then and Now."
But something was missing.
In 1999, Syme celebrated his 50th
birthday, and he realized his career was
no longer fulfilling. "My life was moving
on and I wasn't doing anything to main-
stream all the dreams I ever had about a
career," said the West Bloomfield resi-
dent. "I can make people feel really good
by playing their favorite songs, and I
think it is certainly a noble calling, but I
think I can do much more significant
work by playing the immortal composi-
tions of the composers I love."
Now is the time to take the plunge,
Syme said.
His wife of two years, Victoria, man-
ages the record label and acts as liaison
between the pianist and those who
want to hire him.
Their finances are in good shape and
he still has enough people who remember
him from his classical days to give him a
hand as he revives that part of his career.
"Luckily, the tools are still there,"
said Syme, who practices as much as
eight hours a day. "You are only as
good as the last time you played."
From the pages of the Jewish News
this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50
years ago.
1990
A Jewish Braille Institute volunteer
completed the first book for the
blind to be read in Hungarian,
Jacob Allerno's A History of Israel.
A Tay-Sachs genetic screening
mainly for Torah-observant young
adults of marriageable age was sched-
uled at Sinai Hospital of Detroit.
Archaeologists discovered a 19,000-
year-old skeleton on the shore of
Lake Kinneret in Tiberias, Israel.
1980
S. J. Cherrin is the new social vice
president of Congregation B'nai
Moshe's Senior "Moshe Mouse"
United Synagogue Youth group.
Five-hundred Druze living on the
Golan Heights applied for citizenship.
1970
Yael Ped, the great-granddaughter
of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, settled in
Israel in a kibbutz north of Tel Aviv.
Metro Detroiter Martin K Stein was
elected president of the Probus Club.
Kfar Darom, the first Jewish set-
tlement in the Gaza Strip since the
War of Independence in 1948, was
dedicated.
Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion
enraged American Jews by declaring
that diaspora Jews had forsaken
their religion.
Gottlieb Musikant, former SS
medical orderly, got 21 life terms in
West Germany for killing 21
wartime prisoners.
Surveys of Pembroke and Brown
college graduates showed that inter-
religious marriages led to reduced
fertility.
:43Nakk:,-
s,\,35M
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
started a two-month American tour
at a cost of $500,000.
Career Group of the National
Council of Jewish Women pledged
to send one box of play materials
and supplies a month to the Aid-
to-Israel program.
— Compiled by Sy Manello,
editorial assistant
12/29
2000
29