Harold Bradley (pianist)

Harold Bradley died in November 1984. His school, The Bradley Institute for Music Education Research in Niagara Falls, Ontario, continued to operate and teach students until 2008. Grace Barnes, Deryck Aird, Carolyn Goerzen and Ruth Johnston continued teaching until the closing of the school.

Bradley's students included Grace Barnes (President of the Bradley Institute 1984-2008), Estelle Siefert, Patricia Minnes, Karen Bredin, Sandra Burrus, Steven Bianchi (Founder and Director of The Amherst School of Music), Randall Reade, Lyn Celenza Dyster, Randall Aird, Charlene Aird, Laurie Mango, Wayne Breloff, Doug Monroe, Glen Tilyou, Ken Atkinson, Rivoli Iesulauro, Todd Dutchyn, Carolyn (Thomas) Goerzen (President of the Bradley Institute 2008-), Paul Dyster (Mayor of Niagara Falls, NY), Dennis Kucherawy, Jay Bianchi, Lois Vaughan, Carole J. Harris, Gretchen Heyroth Burrus and composer/recording artist Marcangelo Perricelli.

Kucherawy, Dennis, Student of Harold Bradley, from "Interview with Harold Bradley", circa 1980.

In the 1970s, Bradley's school of music was formalized and the Bradley Institute for Music Education Research emerged with the purpose of developing young minds through music education. It was the only school that Philipp allowed his name to be associated with, and it reflected his approach to music. Grace Barnes, an early student of both Bradley's and Philipp's, became a teacher at the school, and together with Deryck Aird, the three worked to promote the principles established by Philipp and Bradley. The institute, once located above a bank on Queen Street in Niagara Falls, found a permanent home in 1984 when they purchased a building located on the same street.

In a 1969 interview with the "St. Catharine's Standard," a local Ontario newspaper, Bradley said that Philipp in 1930 pointed out that practically everyone plays best with their right hand and has great difficulty developing the left hand technique, even if a left-handed person. Bradley decided that it might be interesting to give equal emphasis upon both hands from the very start of piano lessons. For the rest of his life, he explored this possibility and its results. "It was demonstrated that when children had an early start at the piano and the demands on both hands were equal, both sides of the brain developed equally and a well balanced personality resulted. During these observations it was also discovered that children can learn music at a very early age, even before learning anything else of value."

E.H. Lampard, The St. Catharine's Standard, Interview with Harold Bradley, 1969

Bradley continued to play and teach, and served on the Niagara Falls Board of Education for 24 consecutive years starting in 1938. He focused on both administration and education in schools and discussed this in an article he wrote for "The School Secondary Edition."

In 1936, Harold married Shirley Upper, a friend he had known since childhood. In 1939, they had a son, James Michael.

In 1932, Bradley received news that his mother had suffered a heart attack, and he returned to Niagara Falls, Canada. He spent the next three years traveling between London, New York, and Paris, playing concerts and developing his ideas about music education.

At the end of Bradley's fourth year at the University of Toronto, he befriended a young Oxford professor visiting Toronto, who encouraged him to apply to study English Literature at Oxford. His application was successful, and in the spring of 1930 Bradley made plans to travel to the UK on the ocean-liner Olympic. On board the Olympic, Harold was pressed into playing a teatime concert for fellow guests. After the concert, he was approached by the great bass baritone Edmund Burke and his wife, who would become a second family for Bradley during his stay in Europe and for years after.

Contemporaneous to that interview, Bradley was also interviewed by E. H. Lampard for another newspaper. Bradley stated that he began his association with Philipp in 1930 that lasted until Philipp's death in 1958. Philipp chose Bradley to carry on his great tradition of musical learning because Bradley's Institute "had done the greatest service to piano music in our time." The Institute began its research through Dr. Norman Gibson, who indicated that a string program should be a part of the Institute. John Corigliano, Sr., and Deryck Aird directed this program, and Grace Barnes directed the preschool and piano education field.

At 16, Harold moved to Toronto to begin a bachelor's degree in the arts course at Trinity College, University of Toronto, and to pursue a career in baseball as third baseman for the Toronto Wellingtons. Following his first year at university, Bradley returned to Niagara Falls in the summer of 1923, where he earned $45 a week playing the theatre organ – one of the newly designed Wurlitzers – at the renovated Queen Theatre in Niagara Falls.

James Harold Bradley (Mar 4, 1906 – Nov. 10, 1984), was a pianist and the Founder and Principal of the Bradley Institute for Music Education Research.