About Discovery DaysDiscovery Days are a part of
Sound Insights, The Weill Music Institute’s innovative program for adult concertgoers seeking to enrich their concert experience. In addition to Discovery Days, which offer in-depth thematic explorations featuring lecture-demonstrations, film screenings, panel discussions, and readings, Sound Insights includes pre-concert talks, in which musicians and scholars share insights on the repertoire to be performed after each talk, and companion websites that provide detailed background information on featured events at Carnegie Hall and include audio interviews, musical examples, articles on related subjects, and archival images. For more information on Leonard Bernstein and
Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds, visit carnegiehall.org/bernstein.
ALEXANDER BERNSTEIN
Alexander Bernstein is Leonard Bernstein’s second child. He is president of The Bernstein Family Foundation, and founding chairman of The Leonard Bernstein Center for Learning. Prior to his full-time participation in the center, Bernstein taught for five years at the Packer-Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, New York, first as a second-grade teacher, then as a teacher of drama for the middle school. He has studied acting, performed professionally, and worked as a production associate at the ABC News Documentary Unit. Bernstein holds a master’s degree in English education from New York University and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard.
BURTON BERNSTEIN
Burton Bernstein, staff writer for the
New Yorker from 1957 to 1992, is the author of eight books, including
Leonard Bernstein: American Original, How a Modern Renaissance Man Transformed Music and the World During His New York Philharmonic Years, 1943–1976 (HarperCollins 2008), which he co-edited with Barbara Haws. Like his older brother, he is a Bostonian by birth and upbringing. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he holds a private pilot’s license and was an astronaut candidate for the defunct journalist-in-space project. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Jane, and their dog, Pulcinella.
JAMIE BERNSTEIN Jamie Bernstein is a narrator, writer, and broadcaster living in New York City. Emulating her father Leonard Bernstein’s lifelong compulsion to share and teach, Jamie has created countless concert and media programs to communicate the excitement of classical music. Among her many family programs co-created for Carnegie Hall’s Family Concerts series, earlier this month Jamie presented
The Bernstein Beat, a family concert focusing on the music of Leonard Bernstein. Modeled after her father’s own groundbreaking
Young People’s Concerts,
Jamie’s concerts have been performed across the world, from Beijing to Havana. In her role as a broadcaster, Jamie has produced and hosted numerous shows for radio stations in the US, as well as shows for BBC Radio 3 in Great Britain. For New York’s classical station, 96.3 FM WQXR, Jamie has hosted several seasons of the New York Philharmonic’s live national radio broadcasts, and continues to host annual live broadcasts from Tanglewood.
NINA BERNSTEIN SIMMONSNina Bernstein Simmons is Leonard Bernstein’s youngest daughter. After several years working as an actress, initially at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, she focused her attention on tending to her late father’s legacy. In the earliest days of the internet, Nine worked with the Library of Congress on making the Bernstein Archives digitally available to the public. From 2000 to 2005, Nina worked on a film about her sister, Jamie, and her remarkable journeys around the world bringing Bernstein’s music and teaching legacy to new audiences. Nina is the proud mother of Anna, to whom she now devotes her time.
PAUL BOYERPaul Boyer is Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus and former director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is general editor of
The Oxford Companion to United States History, and author or co-author of many books, including
The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People;
Promises to Keep: The United States Since World War II;
By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age;
Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (co-author);
Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age;
and
When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Boyer is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Society of American Historians. Before coming to Wisconsin, he taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He has held visiting appointments at UCLA, Northwestern University, and The College of William and Mary. His essay “Leonard Bernstein: Humanitarian and Social Activist,” appears in
Leonard Bernstein: American Original, How a Modern Renaissance Man Transformed Music and the World During His New York Philharmonic Years, 1943–1976 (HarperCollins 2008),
edited by Burton Bernstein and Barbara Haws.
ROGER ENGLANDER
Roger Englander has had a tremendous impact on the television industry and the way people think about music. Like his longtime collaborator Leonard Bernstein, Englander was at precisely the right place at the right time to bring cultural television to new heights. Post–World War II American television was remarkably receptive to experimentation and innovation, and Englander brought his expansive imagination, eagerness, and penetrating insight to many vital projects.
In 1949, Englander became an Associate Director at ABC-TV, where his assignments often took him beyond his strong musical background, from news and sports to quiz shows and dramas. Later, in 1953, he was appointed staff director at CBS. His years at that network brought him assignments much more aligned with his musical talents, such as the musical segments for
Omnibus and the critically acclaimed
Odyssey series. He also took dramatic experimental directions with the weekly shows “Lamp Unto My Feet” and “Look Up and Live.”
Perhaps best known as the producer of CBS-TV’s
Young People’s Concerts, Englander also produced the first opera telecasts in history: Gian Carlo Menotti’s
The Medium and
The Telephone. These milestone NBC telecasts in 1947 led to a two-year association with Menotti, during which Englander produced four additional operas by Menotti for the New York City Opera Company, the Chicago Opera Company, and road company tours. He went on to direct musical programs for
The Bell Telephone Hour, creating shows for Alfred Drake, José Ferrer, Isaac Stern, Howard Keel, Rosemary Clooney, Eileen Farrell, and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, among many others. Englander also directed programs for
S. Hurok Presents, and, later,
Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall in 1968.
Englander earned five Emmy Awards during his long career, as well as the Peabody Award, The Director’s Guild of America Award, the Prix Jeunesse from Munich, and the Prague International Festival Award. He is the author of
Opera: What’s All the Screaming About? (Walker 1983), and has written articles for the
New York Times,
Musical America,
Opera News,
and
Television Age, among other publications.
IRA GLASSERIra Glasser was born in Brooklyn in 1938 and has lived most of his life in New York City. He and his wife Trude have four children and 10 grandchildren. Formally trained in mathematics, Ira Glasser taught that subject during the early 1960s at Queens College (CUNY) and Sarah Lawrence College, and helped develop new teaching methods in mathematics for elementary school children at the University of Illinois. He was associate editor and editor of New York’s
Current magazine.
In 1967, Glasser joined the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), where he held positions as associate director, NYCLU Executive Director, and National Executive Director of the NYCLU’s parent group, the American Civil Liberties Union. He served in that capacity for 23 years until his retirement in 2001.
Glasser has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, including semi-regular appearances debating William F. Buckley Jr. on his “Firing Line”
show. He is the co-author of
Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence (1978) and the author of
Visions of Liberty: The Bill of Rights For All Americans (1991). Glasser is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Award; Silver Gavel Award; Allard K. Lowenstein Award; Malcolm, Martin, Mandela Award; Justice in Action Award; Lifetime Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union; and the Lifetime Achievement in Advocacy Award from theCorrectional Association of New York. The American Civil Liberties Union also established a new Racial Justice Fellows Program in 2003 in his name. Glass was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, serving for 30 years, and currently serves as President of the Board of Directors of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce the harms and the violations of rights associated with war on drugs.
BARBARA HAWS
Barbara Haws is the co-author with Burton Bernstein of the recently published
Leonard Bernstein: American Original, How a Modern Renaissance Man Transformed Music and the World During His New York Philharmonic Years, 1943–1976 (HarperCollins 2008). Since 1984 she has been the archivist and historian of the New York Philharmonic, where the archives contain, along with other major collections dating back to 1842, Leonard Bernstein’s working library of conducting scores. In 1996 she became the Executive Producer of the Philharmonic’s Special Editions record label that released Bernstein’s 1943 Philharmonic debut and the award-winning 10-CD collection
Bernstein LIVE. She lectures frequently and has curated major historical exhibits on the Philharmonic history both in New York and in Europe. Born and raised in Nebraska, Ms. Haws moved to New York City in 1977 and completed her graduate work in history at New York University.
RON SIMON
Ron Simon has been a curator of radio and television at The Paley Center for Media since the early 1980s. He is also an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University, New York University, and Hunter College, where he teaches courses on the history of media. Simon has written for many publications, including
The Encyclopedia of Television and
Thinking Outside of the Box, as well as serving as host and creative consultant of the CD-ROM
Total Television. A member of the editorial board of
Television Quarterly, and a judge on the George Foster Peabody committee, Simon has lectured at museums and educational institutions throughout the world. Among the numerous exhibitions he has curated are
The Television of Dennis Potter;
Witness to History;
Jack Benny: The Television and Radio Work; and
Worlds Without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera.