Fanny Hobart

Fanny Hobart was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 17, 1928 to John S. Hobart and Dora Slobodin Hobart. She had one brother who was killed in action during World War II. She attended High School of Music and Art from 1942 to 1943 and then transferred to Midwood High School from 1943 to 1945. She graduated with an academic diploma.

Hobart attended Black Mountain College from 1945 to 1947. She married fellow Black Mountain College student Charles Dreyfus. She studied music at Black Mountain, at the Mannes Music School in New York and at the San Francisco Conservatory.

After her marriage to Charles Dreyfus she lived in Paris where she was a homemaker and performed with chamber music groups. She taught music for fifteen years at the École Active Bilingue, a progressive French-English bilingual group of schools in Paris.

Biography written by Mary Emma Harris for the Black Mountain College Project.

Relationships

Husband: Fellow BMC student, Charles Dreyfus

Asheville Art Museum Collection

Writings about Fanny can be seen in digitized college bulletins on Asheville Art Museum's collection website: collection.ashevilleart.org. They can be found by searching these accession numbers:

2017.40.216 June 1946 bulletin, "Fogelson, accompanied by Edward Lowinsky, sang a Schubert song, and Florence and Vesta, accompanied by Fanny Hobart, sang a duet from “The Marriage of Figaro”. Songs by Cornelius and Gerschwin were presented by Florence Fogelson and Dick Lockwood, accompanied by Mark Fax. Fanny Hobart played a Chopin Prelude and the unique Bela Bartok “Mikrokosmos”. The program culminated in a performance of the exciting Bach Concerto for Two Violin and Piano in D Minor, by Florence Williams and Earlene Wight, violinists, and Patsy Lynch, pianist."

2017.40.218 November 1, 1946 bulletin, "In Ensemble, various groups and individual students are active. Fanny Hobart is studying the two piano version of Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue” with Lowinsky. Julius Scheir is working with him on Bach, Handel and Mozart Sonatas, and with Gretel on the Mozart Duos for violin and viola. The ensemble group under Charlotte Schlesinger, which includes Dorothy Cole, Dorothy Trayer and Earlene Wight, has been doing music of Veracini and Mozart."