Henry Sopkin; Creator of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Henry Sopkin, 84, who created the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra from a nucleus of 100 high school musicians. Before his retirement in 1966, he was musical director of the symphony for two decades, overseeing more than 1,000 performances and such guest soloists as Jascha Heifetz and Benny Goodman. A native of Brooklyn, Sopkin studied the violin as a youth and entered the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, where he grew up, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. In the 1920s and ‘30s, he taught at the conservatory, at Chicago-area high schools and at Woodrow Wilson College before he was hired in 1944 to direct the Atlanta Youth Symphony Orchestra. With a budget of $5,000, most of which came from his salary, he developed the youth symphony into an adult professional organization that 20 years later had a $300,000 budget. After he retired, Sopkin was an instructor with the California Institute for the Arts in Valencia. He lived in the Los Angeles area for 19 years before moving to Palo Alto. In Stanford on Tuesday.