On Tuesday (11/18) in the Tallahassee Democrat (Florida), Mark Hinson reports, “Pianist Carolyn Bridger, who was the principal keyboardist with the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra and a former faculty member at the Florida State College of Music, died in an auto accident in Traverse City, Mich., on Tuesday morning. She was 71…. Bridger was a founding member of the TSO in the early ‘80s with conductor Nicholas Harsanyi. ‘As a player, she was solid as a rock,’ [TSO Executive Director Amanda] Sauer said. ‘We will miss her presence on stage.’ In the early ‘90s, Bridger played a supporting role in helping create The Artist Series along with her husband, Waldie Anderson, who died in 2011.… In 1994, Anderson and Bridger rallied a group of non-professional musicians to form the Big Bend Community Orchestra. The upbeat, quick-to-smile Bridger performed frequently on stages in Tallahassee.” Trained at Oberlin College & Conservatory, Indiana University, the University of Iowa, and Salzburg’s Mozarteum Akademie, Bridger “joined the [Florida State University] faculty in 1976 and retired in 2010. During her tenure, she became the resident director of the FSU Study-Abroad Summer Program in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Bridger played concerts all around the world, ranging from Malaysia to the Dalmatian Islands to Carnegie Hall in Manhattan.”
Posted November 19, 2014
