Leonard Bernstein's daughter stages island concerts of her father's
music
Anita Snow. The Associated Press.
National Post, July 6, 2001.
HAVANA - Leonard Bernstein was a 23-year-old vacationing in Key West, Fla.,
a half-century ago when he first heard scratchy Cuban rhythms from a radio that
was picking up a station on the island to the south.
"He was infatuated with the sound," the late composer-conductor's
daughter, Jamie Bernstein, said in Havana this week. "And it later showed
up in his music."
Now, she hopes to give something back to Cuba in two concerts aimed at
introducing children to the work of her father, the acclaimed composer of West
Side Story.
Jamie Bernstein, 48, who learned Spanish as a child from her Chilean mother,
today and tomorrow will narrate in Spanish a program based on her father's Young
People's Concerts.
"It is the most satisfying circularity," she said during a break
in rehearsals with Cuba's national orchestra. "It is like bringing the
music back home."
Michael Barrett, a protege of the elder Bernstein and a family friend, is in
town to conduct the musical program he created with Jamie Bernstein, called The
Bernstein Beat: What Makes Music Dance?
Arranged with young people in mind, the program features excerpts from
Leonard Bernstein's Fancy Free and Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah.
It also includes selections from the Broadway musicals On the Town, Candide
and West Side Story.
Although Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1990 at age 72, presented a series
of concerts for young people with the New York Philharmonic, none featured his
own musical compositions, Barrett said.
"That's also a nice way to come full circle," he said, sitting
outside the recently renovated Teatro Amadeo Roldan in Havana, where the
concerts will be held.
The concerts will introduce Bernstein's work to Cubans.
"It is amazing that Leonard Bernstein was such a towering figure in the
United States, but remains unknown by many just 90 miles away," said
Jamie's sister, Nina Bernstein, who is also in Havana to attend the concerts and
help produce a documentary film about the event.
Nina's filmmaker husband, Rudd Simmons, is collaborating with Ellen Spiro,
the lead filmmaker on the documentary, a cinematographer and film professor at
the University of Texas in Austin.
Adding to the family affair, Karen Bernstein, cousin of Jamie and Nina, is
also in Havana to work on the documentary.
Jamie Bernstein said she was sure her father would have enjoyed Cuba, its
musical heritage and its people.
"Cuba is just bursting with music. It's so great!" she said. "Dad
would have loved these guys here, he was very demonstrative, just like them."
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