Ralph Hollander was born of musical parents who gave him an early start in both violin and piano. By the time he was eight years old he joined with his two young brothers to form a child prodigy trio (violin, cello and piano) which toured extensively in the eastern United States.

At the age of fourteen, he was admitted to the Juilliard School of Music. Following his graduation three years later, he was one of the very few artist students accepted by Adolfo Betti of Flonzaley Quartet fame with whom he studied for the next five years both here and in Italy. Later he returned to Juilliard for further work with Albert Spalding and Ivan Galamian.

Ralph Hollander was a Concertmaster of the Longines Symphonette (1955-1956) and the N.B.C. Symphony Orchestra. He was a member of the Casals Festivals in France and played under Leopold Stokowski, Arturo Toscanini, and Otto Klemperer. He was a concert violinist performing into his eighties.

Besides being an inventor and musician, he composed Two Cycles of Psalms for Violin and the Spoken Word with Agnes Moorehead as the Speaker, Ralph Hollander as the Violinist and a Speech Chorus. The work was hailed by composer Walter Piston, dean of music at Harvard as “most skillful, tremendously impressive and beautiful.”

Hollander also wrote Galmud: A Song of Despair, Gitane, and Berceuse--all for violin and piano.

Besides the Dampit, Ralph Hollander invented Tonelift for cello—an acoustic platform endorsed by Pierre Fournier and Janos Starker that improves clarity, projection and resonance.