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Donna Grescoe
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Violinist.
Born at Winnipeg in 1927, daughter of Christina Antonina Roscoe (1900-1995) and George Henry Grescoe (1896-1971), sister of Paul Alan George Grescoe, she began playing the violin at the age of 5 when a door-to-door salesman sold her parents a small violin. She gained renowned as a child prodigy, receiving a scholarship from the American Conservatory of Music at Chicago and performing at the Ukrainian-American Festival at the New York World’s Fair. At the age of 14, an adjudicator at the Manitoba Music Festival described her as a genius.
At the age of 18, she moved to New York City where she studied under New York Philharmonic concert master Michel Piastro. She later performed in Carnegie Hall and on Ed Sullivan’s television show. After a concert career, including a period in the string section of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, she taught music, supported young musicians, and commissioned 14 classical music compositions. She was a founding member of the Manitoba Conservatory of Music. In 1988, she moved to British Columbia.
She died at Richmond, British Columbia on 17 August 2012.
Marriage registration [George Henry Grescoe, Christina Roscoe], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 22 August 2012.
“The world on her strings” by Paul Grescoe, Winnipeg Free Press, 1 September 2012, page G8.
Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 9 October 2023
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