Julius Grossman, a renowned music teacher and conductor who led free concerts in New York City for half a century, died last week at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, Long Island.

The cause was complications from heart failure, his family said. Grossman was 90 and lived in Queens Village.

Born in Brooklyn, Grossman began his music career as a concert violinist and later studied conducting at New York University. After directing several award-winning bands in the Pacific during World War II, he taught instrumental music at the Metropolitan Vocational High School in Manhattan.

In 1949, he organized the music department at Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts, where he taught until 1970.

Two years after forming and conducting the Lower East Side Neighborhoods Symphony Orchestra in 1955, Grossman assembled Municipal Concerts, Inc., a non-profit group that presented free concerts in parks, community centers, nursing homes and other places where classical music was not readily available.

Viewed by many observers as Grossman’s lasting contribution to Queens’ music scene, Municipal Concerts gave its inaugural performances in 1960. The group was renamed the Julius Grossman Orchestra two decades later.

“He was very proud of the fact that he provided free concerts, like the orchestra music performances at Seuffert Bandshell,” said Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, executive director of the Queens Council on the Arts. “With the times changing in the 1970s and ‘80s, we lost a generation of students who didn’t have exposure to classical music in the schools. I think that spurred him even further to give the free concerts.”

Consisting of freelance musicians—some of whom were getting their first break, others who played with Broadway shows—the Julius Grossman Orchestra inherited a reputation as a proving ground for some of the nation’s premiere ensembles.

Thousands of musicians played with his orchestra and chamber orchestra, which became known simply as “the Grossman Gigs,” and members of the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra rose up through the ranks under his baton.

Besides offering free performances, Grossman conducted national music week concerts at Manhattan’s Town Hall that gave up-and-coming soloists the opportunity to play with a professional orchestra. The orchestra also played annually at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall to raise funds until the late 1980s.

Over the course of his lengthy career, Grossman was on the podium for thousands of concerts, including his most recent, in October. The ensemble plans to continue its schedule through its final performance of the year, on December 4th at the Flushing House, a private retirement home. The orchestra’s board of directors has yet to make a decision as to the ensemble’s fate after that.