On Thursday's Performance Today, Michael Tilson Thomas reflects back to a humorous evening with Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and the spirit of Igor Stravinsky. Then hear Leonard Bernstein conduct the New York Philharmonic in a performance of Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite.
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Tania Leon is a Cuban-born composer, conductor and a Distinguished Professor of Music at the City University of New York. On Wednesday's Performance Today, Tania Leon tells us about meeting Leonard Bernstein, that "...(it) was like meeting a mythological figure."
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Come match wits with Bruce Adolphe - now you can play the Piano Puzzler anytime, anywhere! Every week, we're putting a sneak peek of the upcoming Puzzler online; have a listen, and then send us your best guess.
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.
Join Performance Today host Fred Child April 2 – 12, 2019, on a privately chartered small ship river cruise with fellow classical music enthusiasts, garden lovers and history buffs. You’ll journey to Amsterdam, Ghent, Bruges, Arnhem and Utrecht. Take in the colorful gardens and music of Holland and Belgium, all the while enjoying a robust program of classical music performances, private recitals and “Perf Chats” with a special Performance Today artist-in-residence.
We recently started tracking how many pieces of music on our program were composed by, performed by or conducted by women. The numbers made it clear: women are underrepresented. Performance Today wants to change that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
