Performance Today Features

Jamie Bernstein Salome painting

Jamie Bernstein's competitive father

Jamie Bernstein's competitive father

Growing up, Jamie Bernstein says her father was relentlessly competitive and preternaturally good at everything. Well, almost everything. In this interview highlight, she describes the glee she and her siblings felt when they found one thing their father wasn't good at. Jamie Bernstein's new memoir is called Famous Father Girl.

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Dinner with Leonard Bernstein

Dinner with Leonard Bernstein

It sounds like the set-up for a great punch line. Three composers walk into a restaurant: Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Michael Tilson Thomas. The first course is challenging musical trivia. The next course involves clanging spoons and glasses. Michael Tilson Thomas describes a memorable dinner with two other American composers.

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Tania Leon describes Leonard Bernstein's 'Maria'

Tania Leon describes Leonard Bernstein's 'Maria'

Sure, the song 'Maria' from Leonard Bernstein's musical 'West Side Story' is lovely. For composer and conductor Tania Leon, it meant so much more. 'Maria' set in motion her dream of a possible life in America. Leon remembers her mentor, friend, salsa dancer and Spanish-speaker Leonard Bernstein.

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Bright Sheng on meeting Leonard Bernstein

Bright Sheng on meeting Leonard Bernstein

When Bright Sheng went to the Tanglewood Summer Music Festival as a young composer, he didn't think his Peking Duck would lead to a meeting with Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein left impressed by the music and thrilled by Sheng's cooking. Those minutes in the kitchen made Sheng "Tanglewood famous," he says, and was the beginning of a long working relationship with Bernstein.

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Anagrams and Mental Jotto

Anagrams and Mental Jotto

Leonard Bernstein's love of word play and competitive drive was notorious. Whether it was anagrams or mental jotto, Bernstein's former assistant Charlie Harmon says there were few who could beat him. And if you did, his daughter Jamie Bernstein said, you might wish you hadn't.

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Tilson Thomas and Bernstein

Tilson Thomas and Bernstein

Conductor, composer, pianist Michael Tilson Thomas says few people realize how rooted Leonard Bernstein was in Jewish Theater. Thomas says that shared interest created an immediate bond between them.

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Charlie Harmon: First introduction with Bernstein

Charlie Harmon: First introduction with Bernstein

In 1982, Charlie Harmon was hired to be Leonard Bernstein's assistant. The first meeting did not go exactly smoothly, but for four years, Harmon had a first row seat to the thrilling, jet set, creative and exhausting career and life of Bernstein. Harmon has written a new book about their work together called On the Road and Off the Record with Leonard Bernstein.

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Stephanie Griffith: Bernstein at the Berlin Wall

Stephanie Griffith: Bernstein at the Berlin Wall

In 1989, just a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Bernstein performed a concert in East Germany for the world to see. They played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, based on Schiller's Ode to Joy poem, but Bernstein changed one important word. Journalist Stephanie Griffith was there, reporting for the Los Angeles Times.

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Andre Watts' debut with Leonard Bernstein

Andre Watts' debut with Leonard Bernstein

"It was as if Bernstein handed me a big platter with 'Career' on it and said, 'Hey kid! You want it?'" Andre Watts said yes. The pianist describes the 1963 concert that changed his life.

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JoAnn Falletta: "Bernstein made the world take notice"

JoAnn Falletta: "Bernstein made the world take notice"

Leonard Bernstein didn't impress just Americans. He impressed the world. Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra's Music Director JoAnn Falletta remembers the music lessons and cigarette ashes Bernstein left in her Juilliard School conducting classes.

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