Active Years: 1918-1990

Position: American conductor, composer and lecturer.

Career Highlights: Compositions include Symphonies Jeremiah and Age of Anxiety, Chichester Psalms and compositions for the theater, West Side Story, Candide, and On the Town.

Scouting Report: Born just outside Boston, Bernstein graduated from Harvard, and became a pupil of Koussevitsky at Tanglewood. He became the assistant conductor and then principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic after a storybook last minute fill-in for then conductor Bruno Walter. The concert was universally applauded by the press, the last time that has happened in New York. The quintessential “ambassador of the game,” his pioneering Children’s Concerts with NY Philharmonic brought classical music to many who had never heard it before, and he continued his efforts to broaden the audience with the famous Norton Lectures on Music at Harvard called “The Unanswered Question” (I think we are still looking for that pesky answer). Equally talented as a composer, he wrote music in many styles, from Broadway to symphonic, defying classification.

Teammates and Contemporaries: Contemporaries with Aaron Copland, with whom he worked at Tanglewood, he became a fixture in the contemporary American entertainment community, breaking down some of the barriers between classical music and other cultural disciplines.

Fun Statistic: Often criticized for trying to do too many different things, he ignored his detractors and continued to plunge into whatever pleased him.