MAMARONECK, N.Y., March 15 (UPI) -- Joseph Bloch, who taught and inspired scores of pianists at New York's famed Julliard School, has died in Larchmont, N.Y., at the age of 91, his family says.
During Bloch's five decade-long career at Julliard, he taught such notable pianists as Misha Dichter, Jeffrey Siegel, Emanuel Ax and Jeffrey Swann, The New York Times noted Sunday.
"Many, many other pianists, even though he didn't teach them privately, felt that he had an immeasurable impact on their musical knowledge and their musical scope," Yoheved Kaplinsky, the current piano department chairwoman at Julliard, said of Bloch.
Bloch, who died March 4 of a heart attack, first joined the performing arts conservatory in New York in 1948. In 2004, the school awarded the 1996 retiree with an honorary doctorate.
"Maybe all of us would have found another road that would have led us to the same end," Ax said of the piano literature professor. "But we were lucky enough not to have had to look beyond him."
The Times said Bloch is survived by three children, a sister and seven grandchildren.
