Leonard Bernstein

Genres:	Classical • Documentaries • Drama • Holiday & Seasonal • Music Videos & Concerts • Musicals & The Arts • Soundtracks • Vocals
Descriptive "tags":	classical • soundtrack • musical • contemporary classical • composer • american • conductor • musicals
Decades Active:	1990s • 2000s
Links online:	BBC Music • Biography • Facebook • Ibdb • IMDb • MySpace • Official Homepage • Wikipedia

Biography

Louis Bernstein, 25 August 1918, Lawrence, Massachusetts, USA, d. 14 October 1990, New York City, New York, USA. Bernstein was a major and charismatic figure in modern classical music and the Broadway musical theatre. He was also a conductor, composer, pianist, author and lecturer. A son of immigrant Russian Jews, Bernstein started to play the piano at the age of 10. In his teens he showed an early interest in the theatre, organizing productions such as The Mikado, and an unconventional adaptation of Carmen, in which he played the title role. Determined to make a career in music, despite his father’s insistence that ‘music just keeps people awake at night’, Bernstein eschewed the family beauty parlour business. He went on to study first with Walter Piston and Edward Burlingaunt Hill at Harvard, then with Fritz Reiner, Isabella Vengerova and Randall Thompson at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and finally with Serge Koussevitzky at the Berkshire...

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