Jerry Bobbe

From his home in Portland, Jerry Bobbe maintains dual careers as both a professional cellist and internationally respected numismatist.  Mr. Bobbe’s primary teachers included Frank Miller of Solti’s Chicago Symphony, and the celebrated Karl Fruh. He served as Principal Cellist in both the Chicago Chamber Orchestra and the Chicago Civic Orchestra, Assistant Principal in the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Symphony, and Principal Cellist of the Florida Orchestra.  For more than a decade, he served as Principal Cellist of the Vancouver (Washington) Symphony, appearing three times as soloist with that organization.  Jerry was named Portland’s Best Cellist in Willamette Week’s 1994 “Best of Portland” issue, where he was pictured on the front cover as his Charlie Chaplin cello-playing alter ego.  Along with Maria Choban, he was a founding member of the critically acclaimed piano trio St. Elvis.  In 2007, Jerry and Maria completed a recording together of the sonatas of Barber, Villa-Lobos, and Muczynski, under the Alitisa label, entitled “St. Elvis, Back in the Building.”  Currently, he enjoys donating his time to fill the halls of local hospitals with cello music for the Children’s Cancer Association, as well as for the Emanuel Burn Center. Jerry performs on a cello of the Venetian master Eugenio Degani, dated 1891.