Vahdah Olcott-Bickford

Vahdah Olcott-Bickford (October 17, 1885 – May 18, 1980) was an American astrologer and guitarist, known as "the Grand Lady of the Guitar."

Early life

She was born in Norwalk, Ohio (One source states that she was born in Sandusky, Ohio.) See Noonan, 2007.

Her family moved to Socorro and then Los Angeles when she was an infant. She started guitar lessons at the age of eight and then, by chance, met the classical guitarist George C. Lindsay and played for him when she was still just nine. This was the start of a lifelong friendship in which Lindsay first tutored her and then introduced her to the famous guitarist, Manuel Y. Ferrer. Ferrer invited her to stay with his family in Berkeley where he gave her daily lessons for a year until he died suddenly in 1904. She then returned to her family and published her first major work, Theme for variations on Nel cor più non mi sento.

Career and contributions

Olcott-Bickford moved to New York in 1911 where she began performing and teaching. Among her early students were Cornelius Vanderbilt and Bernard Baruch. She met Evangeline Adams who helped her choose her stage name, Vahdah.

Olcott-Bickford continued to teach and to write for The Crescendo, a major guitar journal, and with her husband established ZarVah Publishing Company. She was likely the first ever female music director of a mixed-gender guitar orchestra in the United States.

Appointed musical director for the AGS in 1923, she arranged works and guided rehearsals and performances without financial compensation. Under her leadership, AGS concerts evolved into themed, educational programs that introduced members to early music, modern European and Latin American composers, and a broad range of repertoire, though works by women composers remained rare. She also spearheaded the AGS Publication Fund, which between 1925 and 1963 issued twenty anthologies of guitar music, many of which she personally arranged, edited, and distributed to members worldwide. Despite limited resources, Olcott Bickford volunteered tirelessly on behalf of AGS, sustaining its concerts, publications, and community for decades while balancing her career as a performer, teacher, and writer. Ron Purcell, late professor of music at California State University, Northridge, was her student from 1955 when he studied at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Arts.

Legacy

Olcott-Bickford amassed a large library of music, journals and correspondence about the guitar and other similar instruments. where it formed the foundation of its International Guitar Research Archive, now held in Special Collections and Archives in the CSUN University Library.

Olcott-Bickford was a regular columnist for leading BMG journals, including Crescendo, Cadenza, and Serenader, where she promoted the guitar as a serious concert instrument. In addition to performing on guitar, terz guitar, lute, ukulele, and mandolin, she authored method books, published original compositions, and produced numerous arrangements and transcriptions of classical and popular works, including themed volumes devoted to Russian, Spanish, Mexican, and European repertoire. Through her performances, publications, and promotional efforts, she was regarded as one of the most influential figures in North American classical guitar during the first half of the twentieth century.

Personal life and death

Olcott-Bickford married Myron Bickford (also known as Zarh Bickford) in 1915, and changed her name to Vahdah Olcott-Bickford. After her husband died in the early 1960s, she married Robert Revere. She died in Los Angeles in 1980 at the age of 94.

Publications