Obit: Mehli Mehta

Subject: Obit: Mehli Mehta
From: Sorcha
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 10:30 PM

Mehli Mehta

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mehli Mehta, founder of the Bombay Symphony and father of conductor Zubin Mehta, died Saturday of heart failure at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. He was 94.

For more than six decades, Mehta made his career as a violinist, conductor and teacher. He led the American Youth Symphony until his retirement in 1998.

With his wife of 67 years, Tehmina, Mehta raised two sons, Zubin and Zarin, who have also become leaders in the classical music arena. Zubin Mehta is the current music director of the Israel Philharmonic.

Born in Bombay in 1908, Mehli Mehta began violin studies when he was 5 after listening to his father's records.

He studied at the University of Bombay and Trinity College of Music in London, and founded the Bombay Symphony in 1935, eventually becoming the conductor. During the 1950s he served as concertmaster of the Halle Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli. Then he joined Philadelphia's famed Curtis String Quartet in 1960, and later moved to Los Angeles to direct the orchestra department at University of California, where he taught until 1976.