Blog Marco

Leonard Bernstein was born on August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts to a Russian Jewish family. His grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents always liked to call him Leonard. Bernstein's father initially opposed to his interest in music. Despite this, his grandmother frequently took him to orchestra concerts. Bernstein, at a very young age listened to piano performances and was immediately captivated so he subsequently began learning the piano.

During his teenage years, Leonard's enthusiasm for music exploded. He staged amateur operas, dabbled at composition, and played on a radio show sponsored by his father's beauty supply company, a harbinger of the broad scope of his future professional activity. He became particularly adept at improvising variations in the styles of various classical and pop composers. Lennny, as what people sometimes call him, practiced the piano voraciously at all hours of the night. However, he was rather the type of player with a spontaneous outburst of the sheer joy of playing and invention.

He was known as a multi-Emmy and Grammy award-winning and Academy Award nominated American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist and was very highly regarded as a conductor, composer, and educator. The public knows him best because of his longtime position as the music director of the New York Philharmonic. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim.

The world will never forget his compositions, which include the musical theater works West Side Story, Candide, and On the Town. Bernstein was also the first classical music conductor to make numerous television appearances, all between 1954 and 1989. Additionally, he had a formidable piano technique.

"The Day the Music Died" for American classical music was on October 14, 1990. On that day that the world lost, all at once, the greatest conductor, the most influential teacher, one of the finest composers, one of the most accomplished pianists and the most famous native-born musician. Leonard Bernstein died on that day.

People | Have you enjoyed this post? Share it with your friends... »