One of our FamilySearch indexing volunteers, Vera Reed, came across a familiar name while working on the burial registers of Mount Pleasant Cemetery for the Toronto Trust Cemeteries project. Vera writes:
Luigi Von Kunits was born in Vienna in 1870 and died in Toronto in October 1931. He is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. He was a musical prodigy—at the age of 11 he was invited by Brahms to play second violin in one of the composer’s quartets.
His travels took him to the U.S. with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; and for 14 years he was the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
After another sojourn in Vienna he came to Toronto. Here he founded the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and was its conductor until his death. There is a bust of Von Kunits in the lobby of Roy Thomson Hall.
Vera Reed is an Ontario Genealogical Society member from Toronto and has been a very active member of our Toronto Trust project right from the start.
