Biography by AMG
Leopold Anthony Stokowski, one of the true conducting luminaries of the twentieth century, was born in London in 1882. His father was Polish, his mother Irish, but he was raised as an Englishman. His famous, vaguely foreign, accent somehow appeared later in his life. (It is widely believed this was an affectation, as was his name, adopted in place of the less exotic-sounding "Leo Stokes.") The young Stokowski was a precocious musician, and as a child learned to play the violin, piano, and organ with apparently little effort. At the age of thirteen, he became the youngest person to have been admitted to the Royal College of Music.
By eighteen, Stokowski had been appointed organist and choirmaster at St. James', Piccadilly. He attended Queen's College, Oxford, receiving a Bachelor of Music degree in 1903. He moved to the United States in 1905, but returned to Europe each summer for further musical studies in Berlin, Munich, and Paris ... Read More... (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE4791EDB48AB7F20C2966C179A947DF71ED342F38250325F498DE7621BDF5C6AB413A7C6CFB1FA73F87DA5FC2DAE590DC3AA93&sql=41:8753