Leonard Bernstein (placeholder)

AMERICA’S FIRST WORLD-CLASS CONDUCTOR/COMPOSER



Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, pianist and conductor. He was the first conductor born in the United States of America to receive world-wide acclaim, and is known for both his conducting of the New York Philharmonic, including the acclaimed Young People’s Concerts series, and his multiple compositions, including West Side Story and Candide.



After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended Harvard University, where he studied music with Walter Piston, and then the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where his teacher of conducting was Fritz Reiner.



Bernstein died just five days after retiring. He conducted his final performance at Tanglewood, in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, on August 19, 1990. It was the Boston Symphony playing Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. [1]



On the day of his funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan, construction workers removed their hats and waved and yelled “Goodbye Lenny.”



Leonard Bernstein is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.