Flori Gough Shorr

Gough played in recitals^[9] beginning in the 1910s. "Her talent is still in the bud, but the color and texture of its full-blown perfection can easily be foretold," wrote a newspaper reviewer of her skill in 1918.^[10] She was heard on radio concerts from the 1920s.^[3][11] From 1929 to 1934, Gough was head of the cello department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.^[12][13] She performed with the San Francisco Symphony^[14] and the Abas Quartet.^[15][16] She gave her New York debut accompanied by her pianist husband in 1934, in two concerts at Town Hall.^[6][17]

Gough was based in Los Angeles in midlife. She played for NBC Radio,^[18] with the Los Angeles Philharmonic,^[19][20] and with the South Bay Civic Symphony.^[21] In the 1960s, she played cello and viola with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She toured with the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1966, in a program highlighting the women in the orchestra.^[22] Her forced retirement at age 70 was one of the grievances in the Pittsburgh Symphony's musician strike in 1975; she played cello at the strikers' five-hour fundraiser concert.^[23]

Flori Gough married a fellow musician, Russian pianist Lev Shorr, in 1930.^[12] Later that year, she fell seriously ill with pneumonia.^[24] She was injured in a fatal car accident in 1932.^[25] The Shorrs divorced in 1936.^[26] She lived in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s,^[19][21] in Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 1970s,^[22] and in Arizona in the 1980s.^[8] She died in 1992, at the age of 86, in San Francisco.