Celebrate in Ernest

Composer Ernest Bloch’s career took him all over the world but, during the latter part of his life, he and his wife chose to land in Newport’s Agate Beach area.

A new sign at the south end of the Ernest Bloch Memorial Wayside will be dedicated on Sunday, Oct. 3, followed by a reception at the Agate Beach Golf Course.

Bloch died in 1959, and ways to commemorate the illustrious resident began with the 1976 Ernest Bloch Memorial, dedicated by Oregon’s Governor Straub and Bloch’s three children. When the Ernest Bloch Memorial Wayside was dedicated in July 2018, it included stone benches and an interpretive sign, but the main sign wasn’t ready until now.

Born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1880, Bloch’s career brought him to New York City in 1916; to the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1920; to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1925; and back to Switzerland for a lengthy sabbatical in 1930. He returned to the United States in 1939, and he and his wife purchased their house in Agate Beach in 1941, several hundred feet from what is now Ernest Bloch Place.

For more than a decade he returned to UC Berkeley each summer to deliver a series of lectures until his retirement in 1952. Today there are Ernest Bloch societies in the UK, Israel, Switzerland and the US as well as educational activities in Japan and China.

The dedication will begin at 2 pm. For more information, call 541-961-1482 or email fgeltner@ernestbloch.org.