Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, educator, and cultural ambassador. Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrant parents, he studied at Harvard and at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where the legendary conductor Fritz Reiner was one of his teachers.
On this week's show we will hear two sides of Bernstein's musical personality. On the first half of the program we will listen to the Amarillo Symphony's recent performance of David Newman's arrangement of music from Bernstein's score for West Side Story, a suite arranged for violin and orchestra. Then, in the second half, we will listen to our hometown orchestra perform a piece from the beginning of Bernstein's compositional career, his Symphony No. 1 "Jeremiah".
