In the new world.
ADAM GUTMAN is a man of many identities and many talents. In Canada as a musical writer and composer, he worked under the pseudonym of GEORGE ADAMS. As an artist and painter he penned the name BENJAMIN RAJZELE, after the first names of his brother and sister who were murdered by the Nazis. A poet of several tomes, he used his given name Adam Gutman. His friends just call him George.
Born in 1918 in Radom, Poland, he was educated in classical music at the University of Warsaw Conservatory of Music. His studies were cut short in 1939 when World War Two erupted. Surviving the concentration camps, he and his wife Ida and two-year-old daughter Betty, immigrated to Quebec in 1952. A stint with the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra in the early 1950’s, left him longing for his family in Montreal, and he decided to partake in the pioneering of the popular music recording industry, just starting up in Quebec at the time.
As George Adams, he composed for, performed with, and helped develop the careers of such well-known artists as Alys Robi, Rod Norman, Roland Montreuil, Jac Darieux and Yvan Daniel, at the time Quebec’s heart-throbs and hit-parade leaders. Tight relationships and joint efforts developed with lyricists like Jean Grimaldi and Jimmy Burns. An available CD collection is a sampling of some of the works produced in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.