Пола Айзенштейн-Бейкер

Paula Eisenstein Baker, Houston cellist and musicologist, is an authority on the early twentieth-century Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg, Russia.

She has published articles on composer and society member Leo Zeitlin (1884–1930) in the YIVO Annual, the International Journal of Musicology and Shofar, and is co-editor of the volume of Zeitlin’s chamber music that will be published by A-R Editions, Inc.

She has spoken about and performed works by members of the society for audiences throughout the United States, as well as in St. Petersburg, Vilnius, and London. But the cellist and adjunct instructor of cello and chamber music at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, tracked down a nearly forgotten Jewish composer, Leo Zeitlin and, in the process, greatly expanded the Jewish classical music repertoire.

Zeitlin’s chamber works, now available in a critical edition co-edited by Eisenstein Baker and University of Houston Professor of Composition and Music Theory, Robert S. Nelson. “Leo Zeitlin: Chamber Music” (A-R Editions, Inc.), opens a window on the beginning of Jewish art music in Russia.