76 | MARCH 23 • 2023 

J

amie Bernstein, the daughter of the 
late composer-conductor-instrumen-
talist Leonard Bernstein, is returning 
to Michigan to narrate a free concert of 
her father’s music and privately experience 
a piano at which he briefly expressed his 
creativity.
The concert is scheduled for 7 p.m. 
Saturday, March 25, at Birmingham First 
United, a Methodist church in the city of 
Birmingham, where Casey Proch will be 
conducting a full orchestra. Bernstein’s visit 
to see the piano will happen the next day in 
the Cranbrook community. 
“My talk is about the music we’re going 
to hear, and I will weave it all together,
” said 
Bernstein, who has visited this area in past 
years among her travels to talk about her 
father’s work and introduce her own film, 
Crescendo: The Power of Music, which is 
about children and music.
“
As Bernstein material is being per-
formed, those pieces will give me a spring-
board to talk about my dad, and the eve-
ning should be a nice combination of music 
and talk.
”
The evening’s selections, spotlighting 
singers, will include numbers from the 

Broadway musical West Side Story, move 
into the operetta Candide and present 
“Chichester Psalms,
” sung in Hebrew by the 
Birmingham First Choir. 
“I love to emphasize how multifarious 
my father was,
” Bernstein said. “He was 
the ultimate guy who didn’t do just one 
thing. When it came to being a composer, 
he wrote for so many different kinds of 
venues in music. He wrote Broadway mate-
rial, symphonic works and choral works in 
many different styles. 
“He could incorporate Latin American 
flavors and any kind of European genre. He 
loved the blues, so there are a lot of blues 
and jazz elements in his music. Because he 
could do a lot of different things, his music 
was so much fun.
”
Jamie Bernstein, who travels the world 
speaking of her father, called attention to his 
interest in education and how that affected 
the family as written in her book Famous 
Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up 
Bernstein. She reminds people of his tele-
vised Young People’s Concerts that reached 
millions of children around the world.
In the book, she tells about their 
father-daughter time together. She went 

with him to Israel and saw the special atten-
tion he received, and just the two of them 
went boating during summer vacation time 
at Martha’s Vineyard. 
“
A big thing with my father that affected 
everything he did was that he was a lifelong 
humanitarian and activist,
” the daughter 
said. “He took the concept of tikkun olam 
very seriously and used his music to try to 
make the world a better place.
“He used his music to rise above political 
considerations. He believed music tran-
scended that level of disagreement, and he 
believed music could help people rise above 
their differences and find their common 
humanity.
”
As Bernstein communicates about her 
dad, she has taken on three recent projects 
— one about him, another about the histo-
ry of the New York Philharmonic and the 
third as she begins a new book. 
The presentation about him is divided 
into four parts for the streaming platform 
Idagio. The narrative about the orchestra in 
her hometown is a podcast presented by the 
classic radio station WQXR.
While Bernstein is looking forward to her 
narrative program, she is also eager to see 
the piano that her father worked on in the 
1940s and 1980s when he came to the area 
for concert presentations. There are con-
flicting stories about what he was working 
on during those times.
“I don’t have a conscious plan (of what 
I will say), but I’ve discovered over all of 
these years making presentations on all 
sorts of musical topics, I love to share stuff 
that I know about,
” she said. “One of those 
things is my dad, and I love talking about 
him. I get excited the way he used to get 
excited.
“I find myself leaning into my listeners 
and making sure the last row can hear me 
and is getting into what I’m talking about. I 
think I got that from my dad.
” 

Growing Up Bernstein

ARTS&LIFE

Jamie Bernstein to share memories of 
her father, Leonard Bernstein. 

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Details
The Leonard Bernstein free concert 
begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 25, 
at Birmingham First United, 1589 West 
Maple Rd., Birmingham. There also 
is a VIP event starting at 6 p.m., $50. 
(248) 646-1200. fumcbirmingham.org.

Jamie 
Bernstein

CAROL FRIEDMAN

