Biography

Immigrant

Paul Nero (Kurt Polnariov), was born in Hamburg the youngest of three children. His father, Albert Polnariow (see Wiki Link) was a Ukranian violinist performer and composer who travelled extensively throughout northern Europe as kappelmeister.  His older sister, Rosa, a violin prodigy at 14, had already left for America with her father,  on an artist visa to perform with the Philadelphia orchestra.  Young Kurt stayed behind with his mother and middle sister initially but when he turned six they too sailed to New York  to rejoin the family for a new life in America. Like many Jewish immigrants, Nero grew up in a tight knit old world Russian-German community in the Bronx.  He became rapidly ‘Americanized” in the city’s public school system but at home he was trained  to become a classical violinist in the Russian tradition. 

In Paul Nero’s own violin playing, the old Russian classical technique of his early training and homeland culture permeates his musical expression. Instead of muting these influences in obedience to jazz idiom, he embraces them.

Curtis Institute of Music

At Curtis Institute, young Kurt Polnarioff studied with Alexander Hilsburg in classical violin and composition, and after graduating in l937, he began his orchestra career with the Pittsburgh Symphony string section under Fritz Reiner’s baton.

But it was jazz violin that Nero chose as his future path even  in the rigorous Curtis Institute. As his fellow students, Bernstein and Barber were excelling in the traditional classical  traditions, young Polnarioff formed the first Jazz Orchestra for Curtis students.

Soon after, he composed his  “Solo Flight: Concerto for Hot Fiddle” (1943  ).  The swing concerto’s ___movements track the a small prop plane’s  take off,  cruising, flight trouble and safe  landing. The violin technique is demanding and the rhythms are punchy sophisticated. “Solo Flight” was his personal declaration of freedom to make his own music in an American patriotic way. 

In Philadelphia, he met and married a Curtis trained operatic soprano, Kathryn Kero who commented “It was his playing his “Solo Flight” for me that made me fall for him”. 

PATRIOT

Polnarioff Americanized his name to Paul Nero and enlisted for military service right after the Pearl Harbor. He served in the US Navy in 1942 and was stationed in Washington D.C. as musical director of the US Navy Dance Band.

New York City 1946-1947

After the war’s end and his honorable discharge, Nero returned to New York where he worked briefly in New York City, with Gene Krupa’s Band as featured soloist, along with Anita O’Day,  then  at NBC  radio and  the Jan Savitt Jazz Orchestra  and also  teaching briefly at Juilliard.  Nero concertized on stage with Andre Previn at Town Hall and introduced his” hot fiddle “sound to receptive New York audiences.  He was elected to ASCAP in l946 and soon left the East Coast permanently for the Los Angeles emerging jazz scene.

Los Angeles 1948-1958

When asked why he made the switch to jazz from classical violin, Nero was brutally honest about anyone’s  chances of “making it” as a classical violin performing artist.

If I wanted to be the top man in the legitimate field, I would always be bucking men like Heifetz and also because I felt I had a different approach to jazz in the fiddle literature. ..”What I’d like to do with American jazz on the violin is …popularize it so that every home in America is familiar with it” T Kovech/Valley News.  

 Nero was able to find work as a free-lance session musician and his career quickly took off. In L.A., hiring talent was coordinated by contractors who worked for radio producers. Nero was soon held in great demand; performing with such luminaries as, Paul Weston and Johnny Mercer’s Capitol Records for Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee. Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Jo Stafford, and other L.A. based recording stars in the famed Capitol Studio. Nero soon started to go on his own and   recorded his own solo album “Nero Fiddles” for the Capitol label and then for Decca and Sunset Records.

WEST COAST SOUNDS

THE HOT CANARY SUCCESS

The commercial hit, “The Hot Canary” (1949)  showcased a Paganini-style technique in swing-time. Nero wrote it as a practice study (etude) and it became a popular encore piece. Although it was later recorded as a big band vocal by Ella Fitzgerald, and a Trumpet Solo by Maynard Furgeson with Stan Kenton’s orchestra. Nero’s original violin version was more economically successful thanks to an enthusiastic boost from Mercer and Weston at Capitol. “It bought our L.A. house” said Nero’s wife, in a personal interview conducting in 2014.  

Paul Nero recorded his “Solo Flight” jazz violin concerto in 1949 and won high praise from Jascha Heifitz, who was also at that time deeply interested in jazz musicality.  Nero was an innovative arranger and produced his own album for jazz strings ensemble called Paul Nero and His HiFi –ddles on the Sunset label.  Nero never abandoned his classical roots and conducted his own Opera Overture for the New Orleans Symphony, several quartet/quintet compositions and solo works for viola. He published etudes and exercises for the jazz violinists and  wrote several treatises on why classical strings were as virtuosic as horns and presented  broader possibilities to jazz composition and instrumentation.  Nero’s music reflected the sound of a young and vibrant West Coast life style as television and recording industries redefined California. For Nero himself, his prolific and diverse contributions to the American jazz genre mirrored his life’s portrait; a young immigrant musician saluting his new home as a  patriotic American. In the footsteps of Irving Berlin and Gershwin, Paul Nero’s compositions blended old world memories with Californian cool sound  in the key of  optimism for America’s postwar l950’s. Paul Nero died of a heart attack in 1958 at the age of 41, in Los Angeles.