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SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special To The Jewish News

laine Lebenbom has been
composing music since she
was 11, but it took until
almost retirement age to
have one of her works performed by
the Detroit Symphony Orchestra
(DSO).
Lebenbom's piece, "Kaleidoscope
Turning," will introduce a program
that features compositions by
Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky and the
violin talents of Isaac Stern.
Her DSO debut, scheduled Nov. 6-
8 at Orchestra Hall, came almost by
chance.
"There was a small piano perfor-
mance in my home," recalled
Lebenbom, 64, whose music room
holds two Steinways, a spinet, a cello
and small rhythm instruments.
"A Russian emigre was playing one
of my piano sonatas, and Neeme Jarvi
came to hear her because he's interested
in musicians from [Eastern Europe]. I
didn't know he was going to be here.
"Later, when I saw him [at another
event], he wanted to know if I was
interested in writing for the symphony.
[My first reaction] was, 'Are you kid-
ding?'

Suzanne Chessler is a Farmington
Hills-based freelance writer.

10/24

1997

104

When she did something, the only
way it would go out was under her
brother's name."
er
As Lebenbom and her husband,
David, a lawyer, were raising their four
children, she taught piano, giving
lessons privately and for the Detroit
Community Music School, which has
become part of the Center for
Creative Studies.
Their children, grown and out of
the house, took up their own careers
and played instruments as hobbies —
a flute for Miriam Mansour, oboe and
harp for Sallie, a viola for Matthew
and a cello for Michael.
Grandson Joshua Mansour, 8, who
is studying the violin, asked that she
accompany him at his recital last
spring.
The entire family looks forward to
the premiere of "Kaleidoscope
Turning."
"I've gotten some interesting
mileage out of the piano sonata that
Neeme Jarvi first heard," Lebenbom
said. "It won a national prize and will
be on a CD coming out next year."
She has written an opera, The
Witch, the Wise Man and the Fool, and
a piece commissioned by the New
she was the only woman among about
"He wanted an opening piece that
York Virtuoso Singers, "A Garland of
25 men, including the faculty, in that
would run 10 or 15 minutes, and I
Madrigals."
came up with something very much in field. She earned her master's degree in
Other compositions have been per-
music composition in 1982, when
the 20th century musical language. He
formed at Ohio's Annual Festival of
there were about five women among
never asked to see the [score] much in
Modern Music, South Carolina's
25 men.
advance of the concert, but I saw that
Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Interlochen
"There's still an ongoing problem
he got a copy at the beginning of
Arts Academy and Wayne State
for women composers," Lebenbom
October.
University.
"The symphony's playing my
"My time at the piano is
"R‘w:*
work is the most prestigious
unpredictable," said
thing that has happened, and
Lebenbom, whose Jewish-
I've had some pretty good things
based work has included
happen."
writing a piece commis-
Lebenbom, who always has
sioned by a Lubavitcher-
loved serious music, started
Chabad group and teaching
composing soon after her family
a class in Jewish music histo-
bought a piano.
ry for the Midrasha College
"I'd be sitting at the keyboard,
of Jewish Studies.
presumably practicing, and have
"I have a work that's half
things running through my head
finished, a choir piece based
and then my fingers trying them
on a poem I had written
out," she remembered. "I'd hear
during a Holocaust ceremo-
my mother from the back of the
ny. A New York choir direc-
house say, 'You're not practicing.' Elaine Lebenbom: "The symphony's playing my work is the
tor said he'd perform it sight
"She was right; I wasn't. I did most prestigious thing that has happened, and I've had some unseen, so I've got to finish
pretty good things happen."
a lot of that, and my piano
that." El
teacher, Karl Haas, came up
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Mir*N7:\WM4
said. "They're often getting real short
with the solution. He suggested that
shrift and have been effectively edited
my parents also send me to a compos-
er, Clark Easthan.
out of music history.
"I would have two separate jobs —
"Every time I hear something of
practicing piano for two hours and
Felix Mendelssohn's, I wonder if it was
writing music for two hours."
really done by his sister, Fannie, who
Lebenbom earned her bachelor's
was just as good a composer as he was.
degree in music composition from the
"Their father didn't approve of her
University of Michigan in 1951, when
composing and discouraged her.

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