Congratulations to Karen Sweeney of Jersey City, the winner of WNYC's "Our Lenny" Festival contest. Listeners were asked to answer the question "How did Leonard Bernstein change your life" in 250 words or less. You can read Karen's winning entry, below, as well as the essay of our runner-up, Bonnie Stein. Honorable mentions also go to contestants Amanda Cooper, Harriet Semegram, Daniel Molendyke, Mark Dacey, and Michael Safdiah.
"I never met Leonard Bernstein or had the chance to see a live concert, but through the magic of television, there he was in my living room. Handsome, classy, intelligent, funny, and there he was explaining to me why I should listen to his music. My living room was in Johnstown, PA — as far away from New York as one can be. I fell in love. For a girl of eight or nine, it is a love that lasts a lifetime. I went to sleep with his voice in my head and the music serenading the romantic interludes. Fantasy allows a child to expand their horizons and experiences, but here was Lenny, a world renowned conductor and composer, talking on my level about a world I never thought I would be privileged enough to enter. He not only let me in but created the key to the light bulb that sent me in search of knowledge. I wanted to read more, hear more music, travel to more places and met people like Lenny. The amazing idea that humans are capable of creating and playing music brings such joy to me that it is always the one thing I turn to for sanctuary from this crazy world. And if it had not been for the simple idea that Lenny wanted to teach children that classical music is for everyone, my ears may not have been opened to a larger world right there in my living room. He is my hero."
– Karen Sweeney
I was a kid in Detroit. I listened to the radio a lot, since we had no TV. I heard Leonard Bernstein's shows for young people. I think they were called Young People's concerts. I thought they were designed for me. I would sit next the radio and listen to him and he would explain instruments and music in a way that I understood, and that changed me. I felt liberated. I was never a musician, and I loved to dance. When WEST SIDE STORY came out, I was smitten. In my side of Detroit, we were fighting blacks and whites and trying to live next to each other, and to go to school together. This story was my story. It gave me reason to try to make peace with my new black neighbors and schoolmates. He also had my last name, so that really impressed me as a kid! What more can I say? At the age of 56, I now live in NYC, and manage a number of great musicians, even though I still do not play anything. I found classical and popular music through Bernstein. My teenage daughter first saw WEST SIDE STORY when she was a tot, and it is part of her vocabulary. I believe that Bernstein changed my life, like he changed so many American children, by playing music for us and making it accessible to us.
– Bonnie Stein (runner-up)
Comments [3]
Lenny's personal private (sex) life was no one's business but his own. He chose to keep his laundry off the clothes line, as we all have the right to do. To accuse him of lying is heinous.
I am Irving Fine's oldest daughter and I unfortunately missed this broadcast with Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lucas Foss and my father Irving Fine. How can I get a copy of this broadcast, with the round table discussion of What is American Music
I can be reached at dehdds@aol.com
WHY THE LIES
" he married Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn on September 9, 1951, reportedly in order to increase his chances of obtaining the chief conducting position with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor of the New York Philharmonic and Bernstein's mentor, advised him that marrying would help counter the gossip about him and appease the conservative BSO board. [8]
t as he grew older, and as the Gay Liberation movement made great strides, Bernstein became more emboldened, eventually leaving Felicia to live with his lover Tom Cothran. Some time after, Bernstein learned that his wife was diagnosed with lung cancer. Bernstein moved back in with his wife and cared for her until she died. [10]
It has been suggested that Bernstein was actually bisexual—an assertion supported by comments that Bernstein himself made about not preferring any particular cuisine, musical genre, or form of sex—and it has been alleged that he was conflicted between his devotion to his family and his gay desires, but Arthur Laurents (Bernstein's collaborator in West Side Story), said that Bernstein was simply "a gay man who got married. He wasn't conflicted about it at all. He was just gay." [11] Shelly Rhoades Perle, another friend of Bernstein’s, said that she thought "he required men sexually and women emotionally".
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