Background
In his new home Braunstein, along with his father, founded the firm Braunstein Asociados, an advertising agency which lasted for more than five decades.
In his new home Braunstein, along with his father, founded the firm Braunstein Asociados, an advertising agency which lasted for more than five decades.
A native of Bucharest, Romania, Braunstein studied violin at age six and later, at age thirteen, took up the double bass. Fluent in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, he studied at the Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned two post-graduate degrees in economics and chemical industry.
Raised in a Jewish home, he moved to Brazil with his family before settling in Caracas, Venezuela in the early 1950s, becoming a Venezuelan citizen in 1955. Besides this, he was an avid jazz collector and a true connoisseur of the bridge whist game, but found time to teach marketing techniques at universities throughout Venezuela. Nevertheless, he was recognized as an international ambassador for jazz and its promotion as an art form.
On August 12th of this year, he promoted the first official jazz concert in Venezuela at Caracas National Theater inviting the clarinetist and saxophonist John LaPorta, who was backed by several jazz bands during his stay in Caracas, while a selection of the repertoire performed at the concert was released under the title South American Brothers by Fantasy Records.
Since then, Braunstein gained quite a reputation over the years for coming up by organizing concerts with notables jazz groups led by National Adderley, Monty Alexander, Jeff Berlin, Eddie Bert, Randy Brecker, Gary Burton, Charlie Byrd, Chick Corea, Paco de Lucía, Paquito Doctorate"Rivera, Bill Evans, Maynard Ferguson, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Barney Kessel, Tito Puente, Miroslav Vitouš and Paul Winter, among others Foreign many years, Braunstein also worked as a foreign correspondent for magazines as Billboard, Down Beat and Paris Match.
He also was honored by the United States Embassy in Venezuela on the 50th anniversary of his weekly jazz radio show, in virtue of his public profile, his love of jazz, and his becoming an ambassador of good will for the radio listeners during more than 2500 continuous editions from 1955 through 2005. As Braunstein said in his own words, Paz y Jazz, he devoted a significant part of his life to studying comparative jazz styles and techniques, motivating his audiences at Idioma del Jazz, which lasted 54 years, until a few days before his death in Caracas, at the age of 78, after suffering a heart failure.
