This Book of Memories memorial website is designed to be a permanent tribute paying tribute to the life and memory of Niels Ostbye. It allows family and friends a place to re-visit, interact with each other, share and enhance this tribute for future generations. We are both pleased and proud to provide the Book of Memories to the families of our community.

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Condolence From: Carl Distefano
Condolence: I have warm memories of Niels Østbye, who was my first and only piano teacher, at Columbia in the early 1970s. He has been in my thoughts often since then, and I'm sad to find out that he has left us. He was a wonderful teacher, so life-affirming and humane, with a great sense of humor, and I'm sure he left his gentle mark on countless students across the years. He invited me to his apartment in Midtown Manhattan once, to hear a student prepare for her recital, but I regret that I never actually heard Niels himself play. It's good to know that he had a long life, a life certainly well lived.
Saturday March 19, 2022
Condolence From: Carsten Stellenberg
Condolence: Little did I know that our meeting, shortly before my departure for Europe, was to be the last time I would see him... I knew Niels only for a few years, but I will always miss his infectious laugh and the dry sense of humor, the many anecdotes and his wonderful human warmth. I think of him every time I look at Liszt's piano at the little garden house in Weimar's Park an der Ilm (where Liszt taught his master classes) - a place that I would have loved to visit with Niels...
Saturday June 15, 2019
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