Jacob Avshalomov draft score for "Symphony: The Oregon", circa 1960-1962

Jacob Avshalomov was born in 1919 in Tsingtao, China, to Russian-born parents Aaron Avshalomov and Esther Magidson. The family spent several months in Portland, Oregon, when Jacob Avshalomov was eight years old, before returning to China due to a lack of permanent visas. In 1937, Jacob Avshalomov assisted his father with ballet production and musical scoring in Shanghai. That same year, he briefly enlisted in a British volunteer corps when Japan invaded China, and then in December escaped to the United States with his mother; his father came to the U.S. in 1947.

In the U.S., Avshalomov studied in Los Angeles, California, and then at Reed College in Portland. While at Reed, he met Doris Felde (1920-2020), whom he married in 1943; the couple had two sons. Jacob Avshalomov then studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and served as a translator in the U.S. Army during World War II. From 1946 to 1954, he taught at Columbia University in New York, while teaching at other colleges, including Reed, during summers. In 1954, he became the music director of the Portland Junior Symphony (later the Portland Youth Philharmonic). During his tenure, the orchestra toured in Europe, Japan, and Korea. Avshalomov retired in 1995.

Avshalomov published more than forty compositions during his career, including "Symphony: The Oregon" and the three-movement work "Up at Timberline." Among the honors he received were the Naumburg Recording Award, the Ernest Bloch Ward, and Portland First Citizen for 1994. He died in 2013.

Source: "Jacob Avshalomov, (1919-2013)," by Marilyn Shotola, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/avshalomov_jacob/

In 1957, the composers Darius Milhaud, Roger Sessions, and Jacob Avshalomov were commissioned by the Oregon Centennial Fine Arts Commission to write works for the Portland Symphony Orchestra (later the Oregon Symphony). Avshalomov wrote his composition, "Symphony: The Oregon," in the early 1960s, completing the work while on sabbatical in Europe. The Portland Symphony Orchestra premiered the work on March 19, 1962.

Sources: Articles in the Oregonian and Oregon Journal, 1961-1962.