Mrs. Emil (Mollie) Brudno collection

Mrs. Emil M. Brudno was one of Cleveland’s early concert impresarios. Born Mollie Rothenberg in Cleveland in 1880 to Leopold and Anna Rothenberg, her father was a well-known dry goods merchant. Mollie studied music at the Sorbonne where she first met such luminaries as Dr. Albert Schweitzer. In 1907 she married Dr. Emil Brudno, a local obstetrician. The couple had two daughters, Miriam and Ruth.

Mrs. Brudno was very active in civic and Jewish organizations, being an organizer and first president of the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations. She was also a president of the Cleveland Council of Jewish Women. As long-time chairman of the council’s program committee Mrs. Brudno sponsored a lecture series, bringing to Cleveland many of the most distinguished speakers of the day including Clarence Darrow, Bertrand Russell, and John Haynes Holmes. In addition to these activities Mrs. Brudno was a member and president of the Cleveland Chapter of the League of Women Voters; and a member of the Women’s Committee of the Cleveland Orchestra, Women’s City Club, and Euclid Avenue Temple.

Her love of music brought her to the foreground of the field by the 1930s. The Cleveland Museum of Art sponsored her Cleveland Concert Course, through which she brought to Cleveland the finest musicians and dancers of the early to mid-twentieth century including Yehudi Menuhin, Marian Anderson, Gaby and Robert Casadesus, and many others. For a long time she was the only active concert manager in the city. She retired as a concert promoter in 1955. Following the death of her husband in 1958 Mrs. Brudno moved to New York City where she lived with her daughter, Miriam Reichl until her death in 1961.