Jewish impresario Awsay Strok (b.1875, Dvinsk of Latvia, d. 1956, Tokyo, Авсей Давидович Строк) lived in Shanghai from the 1910s to the 1940s and invited world famous musicians and dancers from Europe, Russia and the United States to Asia. He organized a lot of “Asian tours including Japan.” The main cities of his Asian tours are Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai, Hongkong and the colonial cities of Southeast Asia.

The name “A. Strok” as impresario or music manager and disconnected accounts can be often found in the biographies of the artists or articles and books on the reception of the Western music in East Asia. However, there are as yet no studies that examine his life and activities. And the assumption that “Strok invited first-class artists only in Japan” has been existed among Japanese. In fact the artists whom he invited in Japan inevitably visited Shanghai before and after visiting Japan using the regular lines.
In other words Tokyo, Osaka and Shanghai were planned to make a series in his Asian tours. 

Then how can we extract the tours that he produced?
 The author focused on his name as the impresario written clearly in the advertisements and the articles of the theatre in the English and French newspapers, i.e. The China Press and Le Journal de Shanghai, published in Shanghai.
 We can extract the concerts and stages produced by Strok through the database "ProQuest Historical Newspapers - Chinese Newspapers Collection" (2013-) and this paper clarified that more than 40 Asian tours were carried out during 23 years from 1918 to 1940 by him. And above all Strok’s Asian tour made it possible for people to experience the Western music, opera, dance performance by leading artists synchronously. After the war, he set up his own office in New York, and in the 1950s he produced a series of performances in Japan by world-famous artists, choirs and orchestras. He died in Tokyo on a tour in 1956 His funeral was held as a "music funeral" at Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo.

​

​

Who is Awsay Strok?

 

b. 1875 in Dvinsk, Latvia; d. 1956 in Tokyo 

He lived in Shanghai between the 1910s and the 1940s. 

He invited world-famous musicians and dancers from Europe, Russia, and the United States to Asia, and organized numerous “Asian (Oriental) tours,” which included Japan. 

The main cities on on his Asian tours were Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, and colonial towns of Southeast Asia.

 

Strok invited many great artists to Asia for the first time.

 

1921  Mischa Elman (vn)

1923  Fritz Kreisler (vn)

1923  Jascha Heifetz (vn)

1928  Jacques Thibaud (vn)    

1928  Benno Moiseiwitsch (pf)

1929  Andrés Segovia（guitar）

1935   Arthur Rubinstein (pf)

1936  Feodor Chaliapin (bass)

 

Strok also invited dancers and introduced modern ballet to Asia.

 

1925–26  Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn 

1928–29  La Argentina 

1931  Clotilde, Alexandre Sakharoff 

1932  Teresina 

1934  Ruth Page, Harold Kreutzberg 

1934  Clotilde, Alexander Sakharoff 

1935–36  Manuela Del Rio