On The Road And Off The Record With Leonard Bernstein

Celebrating Leonard Bernstein's centenary with an intimate and detailed look at the public and private life of the Maestro written by his former assistant. Foreword by Broadway legend Harold Prince. "An affectionate portrait of an eminent musician who was driven by demons." —Kirkus Reviews "Harmon’s personable and warm account of what it was like to work for one of the twentieth century’s musical giants casts new light on Bernstein and his world." —Booklist "This multifaceted perspective gives readers plenty of salacious gossip paired with insight into Leonard Bernstein’s remarkable artistic achievements later in life." —Library Journal On the Road is a colorfully written, unforgettably entertaining and unputdownable book, and is available just in time for LB’s 100th birthday. Unreservedly recommended. —Fanfare Magazine Leonard Bernstein reeked of cheap cologne and obviously hadn't showered, shaved, or slept in a while. Was he drunk to boot? He greeted his new assistant with "What are you drinking?" Yes, he was drunk. Charlie Harmon was hired to manage the day-to-day parts of Bernstein's life. There was one additional responsibility: make sure Bernstein met the deadline for an opera commission. But things kept getting in the way: the centenary of Igor Stravinsky, intestinal parasites picked up in Mexico, teaching all summer in Los Angeles, a baker's dozen of young men, plus depression, exhaustion, insomnia, and cut-throat games of anagrams. Did the opera get written? For four years, Charlie saw Bernstein every day, as his social director, gatekeeper, valet, music copyist, and itinerant orchestra librarian. He packed (and unpacked) Bernstein's umpteen pieces of luggage, got the Maestro to his concerts, kept him occupied changing planes in Zurich, Anchorage, Tokyo, or Madrid, and learned how to make small talk with mayors, ambassadors, a chancellor, a queen, and a Hollywood legend or two. How could anyone absorb all those people and places? Because there was music: late-night piano duets, or the Maestro's command to accompany an audition, or, by the way, the greatest orchestras in the world. Charlie did it, and this is what it was like, told for the first time.

A wide-ranging introduction to one of the twentieth century's most famous cultural icons: pianist, conductor, composer and educator Leonard Bernstein.

Composer, conductor, activist, and icon of twentieth-century America, Leonard Bernstein (1918-90) had a rich association with Washington, DC. Although he never lived there, the U.S. capital was the site of some of the most important moments in his life and work, as he engaged with the nation's struggles and triumphs. By examining Bernstein through the lens of DC, this book offers new insights into his life and music from the 1940s through the 1980s, including his role in building DC's artistic landscape, his political-diplomatic aims, his works that received premieres and other early performances in DC, and his relationships with the nation's liberal and conservative political elites. The collection also contributes new perspectives on twentieth-century American history, government, and culture, helping to elucidate the political function of music in American democracy. The essays in Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC, all newly written by leading authorities, situate this important American cultural figure in the seat of United States government. The result is a fresh new angle on Leonard Bernstein, American politics, and American culture in the second half of the twentieth century. Daniel Abraham is Professor of Music at American University, Alicia Kopfstein-Penk is Adjunct Professorial Lecturer at American University, and Andrew H. Weaver is Professor of Musicology at The Catholic University of America.

Historical Dictionary of Leonard Bernstein contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries encompassing people whom he befriended or worked with, institutions, orchestras, performance venues, cities, compositional methods, and compositions.

This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on the most important composers, musicians, methods, styles, and media in modernist and postmodern classical music.

Much has been written about Leonard Bernstein, a musician of extraordinary talent who was legendary for his passionate love of life and many relationships. In this work, Mari Yoshihara reveals the deeply emotional connections Bernstein formed with two little-known Japanese individuals, which she narrates through their personal letters that have never been seen before. Dearest Lenny interweaves an intimate story of love and art with a history of Bernstein's transformation from an American icon to a world maestro during the second half of the twentieth century. The articulate, moving letters of Kazuko Amano--a woman who began writing fan letters to Bernstein in 1947 and became a close family friend--and Kunihiko Hashimoto--a young man who fell in love with the maestro in 1979 and later became his business representative--convey the meaning Bernstein and his music had at various stages of their lives. The letters also shed light on how Bernstein's compositions, recordings, and performances touched his audiences around the world. The book further traces the making of a global Bernstein amidst the shifting landscape of classical music that made this American celebrity turn increasingly to Europe and Japan. The dramatic change in Japan's place in the world and its relationship to the United States during the postwar decades shaped Bernstein's connection to the country. Ultimately, Dearest Lenny is a story of relationships--between the two individuals and Bernstein, the United States and the world, art and commerce, artists and the state, private and public, conventions and transgressions, dreams and realities--that were at the core of Bernstein's greatest achievements and challenges and that made him truly a maestro of the world. Dearest Lenny paints a poignant portrait of individuals connected across cultures, languages, age, and status through correspondence and music--and the world that shaped their relationships.

The oldest daughter of revered composer Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centenary of his birth—illuminating a man, a city, and an era that defined modern culture—in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir reminiscent of Alexandra Styron’s Reading My Father and Richard Ford’s Between Them. The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and inveterate partygoer Leonard Bernstein was a massive celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, and perhaps the most talented musician in American history. To his eldest daughter, Jamie, he was all that and more; he was the man in the scratchy brown bathrobe that smelled of cigarettes, who sat late at night at the piano when he couldn’t sleep (he could never sleep). An incredible jokester, an incessant teacher, he taught her to love the world in all its beauty and complexity. In public and private, Lenny was larger than life. In Famous Father Girl, Bernstein mines the emotional depths of her childhood and invites us into her family’s private world. A fantastic set of characters populate the Bernsteins’ lives, including: the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Richard Avedon, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Betty (Lauren) Bacall. An intoxicating tale, Famous Father Girl is an intimate meditation on a deeply complex and sometimes troubled man and the beautiful music that was the soundtrack to his life. Deeply moving and often hilarious, Bernstein’s beautifully written memoir is great American story about one of the greatest Americans of the modern age.

“You’ll never look at the region the same way again after reading about the tunnel from hell, toe-tugging spirits, and the curse of the mummy.” —The Boston Globe Before it became a haven for arts and culture, the Berkshires was a rugged, sparsely populated frontier. From the early days of Revolutionary fervor and industrial enterprise to today’s tourism, many chilling stories remain. A lost girl haunts a cemetery in Washington, and mysterious spirits still perform at Tanglewood. From the ghostly halls of the Houghton Mansion to the eerie events at the Hoosac Tunnel, residents and visitors alike have felt fear and awe in these hills, telling tales of shadow figures, disembodied voices and spectral trains. Author Robert Oakes, who has given ghost tours at The Mount in Lenox for more than a decade, leads this spirited journey through history. “The rich history of this region—spanning more than two centuries—includes spine-tingling tales from almost every town in the county. Oakes culled many of them for his book, which touches on myriad metaphysicals, including ‘The Undead Hessian of Egremont,’ ‘Highwood’s Ghost at Tanglewood,’ and ‘The Ghostly Guest in 301: The Red Lion Inn’—each of which will inspire readers to ‘peer into the shadows beyond the beam of [their] flashlight.’” —The Berkshire Edge