Eastman Showcase 2006
Learning About Lenny
Musicology PhD student Ayden Adler (MM ’97 and DMA ’99 in horn performance) is currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, completing her dissertation about the Boston Pops Orchestra. She is also researching another Boston icon: the eminent composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, who was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1918, graduated from the Boston Latin School in 1935, and from Harvard in 1939. The university is offering a seminar this year on the early life of one of its most famous alumni, and the resulting research — by Ayden, along with numerous professors and students - will be shared at a conference on Bernstein’s life and career to be held in October.
Despite his celebrity, Bernstein’s early years have been studied very little. Students in the Bernstein seminar are interviewing his surviving grammar-school classmates, examining his high-school geometry notes, and exploring his childhood neighborhood for clues to his musical and intellectual development. The work may sound mundane, but as Ayden pointed out in a recent Boston Globe article about the seminar, “It’s important, if you can see the sources firsthand, to do so. When you’re writing later, you never know. Something that seemed unimportant at the time will turn into a gem of knowledge you will need for your work.” Spoken like a true musicologist!
Eastman will be well represented at October’s Harvard conference on “Bernstein and His Many Worlds”; besides Ayden, participants will include Professor Ralph Locke and Elizabeth Wells (MA ’96, PhD ‘04), who will chair a session on Bernstein’s best-known work, West Side Story. Soprano Nicole Cabell (BM '01), named Cardiff Singer of the World 2005, will be featured in the conference's finale, a "Celebrating Bernstein" concert. Nicole, joined by Harvard students, will sing highlights from Bernstein's theatre scores.