Elizabeth Gutman Kaye

Gutman was born in Baltimore, the daughter of Louis K. Gutman and Ida Newburger Gutman. Her father was a department store executive.^[3] Her mother was founder and president of the Baltimore Music Club and active in the National Federation of Music Clubs.^[4] Her sister was theatrical director and writer Adele Gutman Nathan (1889–1986).^[5][6][7] She attended Goucher College.^[8]

Kaye found success as a soprano, specializing in Brazilian, Spanish, Russian and Yiddish folk songs.^[9][10] She toured in the United States and gave recitals in New York City,^[10][11] Washington, D.C.,^[12] Paris, Vienna and Rome.^[13] She was featured at a lecture by writer Ilya Tolstoy in 1917, along with pianist Leo Ornstein and the Ukrainian National Theater of New York.^[14] She was a soloist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.^[8] She also gave costumed performances for children,^[15] taught voice students,^[16] lectured on folk music,^[17] and wrote songs.^[18]

Kaye did not have a strong voice, but she researched her genre^[19] and conveyed "the spirit and content" of the songs effectively.^[20] "If I did not think I had something to say that was worth making people hear and see, I should never try to sing," she told the Musical Courier in 1918.^[2] Dixie Selden made a portrait of Gutman before 1930.^[21]

Kaye was also a talented watercolorist,^[22] and her works were exhibited in Europe and the United States.^[23][8] She sometimes used the name E. G. Katzenstein for her art.^[24]

• "At Night" (1948, words by Juanita D. Miller)^[18]
• "Child and Moon" (1954, words and music)^[18]
• "Was it a Dream?" (1954, words and music}^[18]

Gutman married department store executive Walter Kaye in 1911. She reported a jewelry theft from her Baltimore apartment in 1926.^[25] After her husband died in 1945,^[26] she lived in New York City and in Italy. She died while vacationing in Jamaica in 1971, at the age of 83.^[8]