LATE NIGHT WITH LEONARD BERNSTEIN
soprano, two pianos, and guest narrator Jamie Bernstein
May 20, 2018, 4 PM
Music Room
Credit: Richard Bowditch
Tickets for this concert will become available on March 1, 2018, at 10 am.
Tickets are $40, $20 for members and students with ID; museum admission for that day is included. Advance reservations are strongly recommended.
“The audience filled the room with lusty laughs and applause.” – The New York Times
A well-known insomniac for whom night was a time for creativity and friendship, deep introspection, and revelry, the iconic Leonard Bernstein loved to work at all hours, often entertaining friends and guests late into the night and dazzling them with charismatic performances across a wide range of musical styles. Late Night with Leonard Bernstein―hosted and narrated by his daughter Jamie and featuring acclaimed soprano Amy Burton and celebrated pianists John Musto and Michael Boriskin―is an affectionate, multi-media portrait of the personal side of this singularly public figure. This vibrant evening captivated sold-out audiences at Lincoln Center and Copland House when it first opened, and is enchanting concertgoers at the Ravinia, Boca Raton, and La Jolla Festivals, and in Boston, Cleveland, Charleston, Buffalo, and many other cities.
The program traces Bernstein’s journey back to his years as a prodigiously-gifted undergraduate who loved jazz, classics, and thorny modernists with equal passion, and his early efforts as an aspiring composer and arranger of musicals, dance, and pop novelties. Several of his most intimate works are performed, along with some of his favorite compositions by Copland, Schubert, Grieg, Zez Confrey, Noel Coward, Ernesto Lecuona, and others. Brief audio and video excerpts of the Maestro himself are among the program’s many highlights. The entire evening is woven together through Jamie Bernstein’s personal, affecting script, and a slide show of rare photographs of the legendary artist and his family, friends, and colleagues. As The New York Times noted, “here were lots of little surprises … early bits of aborted projects that later surfaced, re-imagined, in famous works like West Side Story and Mass; a tongue-twisting parody [of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony] by Bernstein’s buddy Adolph Green; a film clip of Bernstein at the piano, singing a Marc Blitzstein novelty number.”
Part of a DC-citywide centennial celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday.