thumb|Hurok with actress [[Hanna Rovina, 1954]]
Sol Hurok (also Solomon Israilevich Hurok; born Solomon Izrailevich Gurkov, Russian Соломон Израилевич Гурков; April 9, 1888March 5, 1974) was a 20th-century American impresario.
Sol and girl friend Tamara (Mary) Shapiro had arrived in New York City together in 1906 and married in 1908. The 1910 Census shows him working as a hardware salesman, likely with his father, while living in Brooklyn with Tamara and their and their year-old daughter Ruth, who would be the couple's only child.
Career
During Hurok's long career, Van Cliburn, Victoria de los Ángeles, Manuela del Río, Isadora Duncan, Katherine Dunham, Michel Fokine, Margot Fonteyn, Emil Gilels, Alexander Glazunov, Horacio Gutiérrez, Daniel Heifetz, Jerome Hines, Isa Kremer, Moura Lympany, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, David Oistrakh, Anna Pavlova, Jan Peerce, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Andrés Segovia, Isaac Stern, Galina Vishnevskaya, Regine, Ralph Votapek, Efrem Zimbalist, Mariemma and many others.
In the early 1920s, opportunities for Black singers, especially Black male singers, were nearly non-existent on the concert or operatic stage. Most of the few who found any success did so by traveling to Europe to establish a professional career. Jules Bledsoe was an exception: he was able to sign with Hurok. With Hurok's sponsorship, Bledsoe made his professional singing debut in New York's Aeolian Hall on Easter Sunday, April 20, 1924.
Family
In 1935, after some 27 years of marriage, Hurok divorced his wife Mary and married Emma Borlsovna Perper, a concert pianist and "glamorous Russian cabaret performer who was both a widow and a divorcee.
At the time of Emma's death just a few months after Sol Hurok's in 1974, the couple had been separated for many years.Daughter Ruth Hurok married press agent Barry Hyams, and both of their children also became prominent figures in the entertainment industry: Nessa Hyams and Peter Hyams. Ruth's second marriage, which lasted 45 years, was to blacklisted conductor and voice teacher Arthur Lief.
Sol Hurok's grandson--the son of Peter Hyams--John Hyams is also a film director.
Death
In 1974, en route to a meeting with David Rockefeller to discuss a Rudolf Nureyev project,