Fredell Lack
American violinist Fredell Lack was born on Tulsa, Oklahoma on 19 February 1922, the eldest of three children of Latvian immigrants. She studied violin from the age of six with Tosca Berger and then (aged ten, when her family moved to Texas) with Josephine Boudreaux, concertmaster of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Aged eleven, she played Wieniawski's Violin Concerto No 2 with the Tulsa Philharmonic.
She moved to New York and studied with Louis Persinger, and made her professional debut aged seventeen, playing the Mendelssohn Concerto with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Her long career took her all over the world, including more than twenty tours of Europe. She played the Baron Deurbroucq 1727 Stradivari with a François Tourte bow.
She also taught violin for fifty years at the University of Houston, and advocated animal welfare (in spite of having had the tip of the little finger on her left hand bitten off by a dog in the 1950s).
Fredell Lack died in Houston, Texas on 20 August 2017, aged ninety-five.