CIM Remembers Emeritus Faculty Larry Angell

Emeritus Faculty Lawrence (Larry) Angell passed away in December following a lengthy illness. Friends and community members are invited to celebrate his life at a memorial service on Saturday, February 10, at 1:30pm in Mixon Hall. For those of you who are unable to attend in person, we plan to livestream the memorial service, which you may view by using this link.

Angell was head of the double bass department at CIM from 1969-99, and a member of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1955-95. He also taught at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, presented master classes and coached throughout the United States and abroad, and taught at festivals including the Kent/Blossom School, Encore School for Strings, Hawai’i Contrabass Festival, Sarasota Music Festival and the Scotia Festival of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

He performed with various chamber groups with his beloved wife and pianist Anita Pontremoli, of whose playing he was constantly in awe. Angell collaborated with Lynn Harrell, Arnold Steinhardt, Walter Trampler, Paul Kantor, The Cleveland Quartet and many others. He performed a great deal of new music including Musings On the Black Moon by Marcel Dick, and Bass Piece, a work composed for him by former CIM faculty member Donald Erb. Throughout his career he participated in nearly 500 recordings.                        

Following his retirement, Angell wrote Tales from the Locker Room: An Anecdotal Portrait of George Szell and his Cleveland Orchestra. A project very close to his heart, this book takes an honest, humorous, and sometimes brutal look at Szell’s musical genius through first hand interviews of several members of the Cleveland Orchestra who served under Szell.

Angell was a native of Saginaw, Michigan, and he studied at the Interlochen Center for the Arts before serving in the Korean War. He earned his degrees from the Eastman School of Music.

Angell is survived by his wife of 36 years, Anita Pontremoli, his five children, four grandchildren, his mother-in-law and siblings-in-law.