About the Website

This  is a biography of  my great uncle Samuel Kutcher. I met him a few times many years ago, visiting him with my father at his London home. Although I knew he was a violinist of some note in his early years, I had no idea of the level  of his accomplishment or fame.

In 2007 I began researching the genealogy of the Kutcher family. Searches on the Internet threw up the occasional titbits mentioning Samuel, but it was not possible to get a clear idea of the trace of his musical career.    It wasn’t until recently   that in a change encounter with the grandson of Samuel’s partner for many years, Sheila, he told me that he held a couple of boxes of Samuel’s belongings which included concert programs, photos, press cuttings and  letters which he was kind enough to pass onto me.

It did not take much time looking through the material to see that not only was he a highly regarded musician  in his time, but also influential in his support of new composers.

Having organized the material,  I started to  write up his career in chronological order. However I  soon  realized that  this  was not  necessarily the best way to  present Samuel’s musical career in a web based format. I decided  then to focus on  various themes of  his professional file as they developed from the research, and this is what you see now.  Using the  ‘WordPress’ Blog  format provides a fluid way or bringing together, and if necessary rearrange  these themes as the research progresses.  The  organized books of press cuttings stop at 1934,  and it seems Samuel dispensed with the professional press cutting services in 1936.  Brochures and pamphlets  in the collection virtually stop in 1942, although he clearly does continue to play after this time. However this does make it difficult for example  to say  exactly when he stopped playing with the various ensembles, and withdrew from public performances.  Any dates I am unsure of will have a (?) following them.

This is a work will take a number of years to complete ( I haven’t given up the day job yet), so there will be constant updates, and hope that the material gathered will provide a rich resource for historians of  the music  of those times, and reveal the extraordinary career of Samuel Kutcher.

My apologies in advance if I have  infringed any copyright laws. Do let me know if I have. This is a non-profit website.

You are welcome to download, use and print, redistribute any of the material on this website for non-commercial use.

Jeff Kutcher

Technical bits

This website is being built using WordPress, an open source blogging program
Flipping books are best seen on a 19″ screen. I am experimenting with various formats and this seems the best way at the present to display booklets.

I have used the Floatbox plugin for placing the graphics.  By clicking on them you can see them full size.  All the graphics have been cleaned and tidied up, as  most of the originals have degraded with time in one form or another.

How to downloading Graphics

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