Djane Lavoie-Herz

Lavoie-Herz, Djane

Djane Lavoie-Herz (b Lavoie, m Herz). Pianist, teacher, b Ottawa 1889, d New York? She studied in Montreal with Alfred La Liberté and, after 1905, in London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels. In Brussels she again had lessons with La Liberté, and also with his teacher, Alexander Scriabin. She also studied with Artur Schnabel in Berlin. Lavoie's recitals in Ottawa, Montreal, and elsewhere (1908-14) received much praise and were devoted in particular to works by Liszt, Scriabin, and Brahms. In 1911 or 1912 Lavoie married a writer, Siegfried Herz (b Barmen, Germany, 1883), who had come to Canada in 1907, worked for Nordheimer, and contributed articles to Musical Canada and who assumed the name Lavoie-Herz. A recital was planned for October 1914 at Aeolian Hall, New York, followed by a US tour, but it appears to have been postponed a year. (She played in New York 21 Oct and 23 Dec 1915 to favourable notices).

In 1914 the Lavoie-Herzs settled in Toronto, where he worked as a salesman for Nordheimer and she opened a studio and gave recitals. A typical program, at Nordheimer Hall 25 Jan 1916, offered music of Bach, Mozart-Liszt, Liszt, Chopin, and Scriabin. Several of Lavoie-Herz's pupils - Margaret McCallum, Edwin Gray, and Estelle Beder - gave solo recitals in Toronto ca 1916-17.

The couple are listed in the Toronto city directory until 1919, but there is reason to assume they moved to the USA (probably New York) in 1918, since she was a piano teacher 1918-21 of the US composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. Her husband changed his name to Hearst and became a successful manager in New York, associated in the 1940s and 1950s with National Concert and Artists' Corporation. It is known that she was teaching privately at that time.