Eva Mayer Schay was born to Jewish parents in Cologne, Germany, on August 24, 1931. During Hitler’s rise to power, her parents emigrated to the island of Mallorca. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the family was repatriated to Germany, where Eva’s father was arrested. Next came Italy, then South Africa, where Eva underwent her schooling, musical training, ... Read moreand university. Her father died on her fourteenth birthday, after the end of World War II. In 1953, she won a scholarship for further violin studies in England with the great pedagogue Max Rostal. Returning to South Africa, she played with the SABC Symphony Orchestra and subsequently with the Durban Civic Orchestra. Deploring the apartheid regime, Mayer Schay and her mother emigrated to England in 1961. She taught violin and worked as freelance musician until after her marriage, when she joined the orchestra of English National Opera, where she remained for almost thirty years. Show Less