Shirley Aronoff Greitzer, a pianist and former director of placement at The Juilliard School who was a longtime fixture of the Metropolitan area music business, died of kidney and heart failure on May 29 at New York Hospital. She was 76.

Shirley Greitzer in 1953, from a flier for a Town Hall recital.

Mrs. Greitzer was born in 1926 in Dallas, where she later made her professional debut with the Dallas Museum Symphony performing Mozart's D-Minor Piano Concerto. She was re-engaged the following year to perform the Liszt E-Flat Concerto.

After winning first prize in the Mu Phi Epsilon competition, she received a scholarship at 17 to attend The Juilliard School to study with Rosina Lhévinne (whose assistant she later became). She also studied chamber music with English cellist Felix Salmond, and with Louis Persinger. At Mrs. Greitzer's Town Hall recital debut, Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times hailed her as "one of this country's superior young pianists." For two years she was the harpsichordist for the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York and recorded for Vox Records. She also served as the director of the Waterloo (N.J.) Music Festival School before joining the staff of Juilliard.

Mrs. Greitzer was the widow of Sol Greitzer, a former principal violist of the New York Philharmonic and a Juilliard alumnus. In 1991 she established a memorial scholarship at Juilliard in her husband's name, to which she was a consistent contributor. She is survived by three daughters (all of whom are Juilliard alumnae): Deborah Greitzer Silberschlag of Maryland, Jody Schwarz of Seattle, and Pamela Manasse of Manhattan; three sons-in-law (Jeffrey Silberschlag and two more Juilliard alumni, the conductor Gerard Schwarz and the clarinetist Jon Manasse); a sister, Marjorie Weissman; a niece, Lisa Greenberg; and six grandchildren.