Eileen Andjelkovitch

Eileen Russell Worby was usually described as Scottish,[1][2][3] but Eileen Constance Smith was born in Ireland, the daughter of Frank and Annie Smith; the Smiths lived in Buckinghamshire by 1901.[4] She was adopted by widowed Scottish-born music teacher Anna Alexander Russell Worby, and was living in London by 1911.[5] Successful examination by the Royal Academy of Music granted her a license to teach violin in 1923.[6][7][8]

As a young woman, Eileen Russell Worby played violin at theatres,[9] and was musical director at the Broadway Gardens Kinema in Walham Green in London.[10]

Andjelkovitch was a concert violinist.[1] She gave a concert at London's Aeolian Hall in 1927,[11] and accompanied Welsh baritone Owen Bryngwyn at the same venue in another concert that year.[12] She also made several recordings in the 1920s.[13] "She has an exceptionally rich tone and a great deal of temperament," wrote one reviewer in 1925.[14]

She performed on BBC Radio broadcasts in the 1920s[15][16] and 1930s.[17][18][19] On the London stage, she was musical director of the shows Jane and Genius (1934), The Mask and the Face (1934)[20] and Within the Gates (1934).[21] In 1936, she conducted the King's Theatre Orchestra at a benefit concert in Hammersmith.[22]

Andjelkovitch was also known as a music educator. She was principal of the Fulham Central College of Music in 1927,[23] and in 1932 and 1933,[24] she principal of the Modern School of Music on Fulham Road in London.[6]

Russell married a Yugoslavian diplomat, Vidoslav Andjelkovitch, in July 1921.[25][26][27] She married fellow musician Gregori (Grisha) Tcherniak in 1934.[28] She married a third time, to musician George Ernest Cathie. In 1941 she died at the age of 45, at a nursing home in Worthing.[29]

• Eileen Andjelkovitch playing a violin solo by Massenet, on a 1927 recording, at Internet Archive