Category: Music

“Maestro” is pretty good. At least that appears to be the overall verdict from critics and audiences (80% and 85% positive ratings, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes). In my sphere, the classical music community reaction has been a collective sigh of relief.

The Leonard Bernstein biopic is not mean-spirited as “Tár,” about a fictional conductor and Bernstein prodigy. Besides being a great conductor, composer, pianist and educator, Bernstein wrote a winning bestseller, “Joy of Music,” and thankfully “Maestro” is not joyless.

At the world premiere of the film in Venice, Italy, Bernstein’s three children were seen dancing in the aisles as the credits rolled. At the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where I saw “Maestro” as part of the AFI Fest, Jamie Bernstein jubilantly introduced the screening by saying that Bradley Cooper — the film’s director and star — nailed her dad. Ditto Carey Mulligan, who portrays her mother, actress Felicia Montealegre Bernstein.

One of the reasons why “Maestro” comes across as pretty good, or maybe even a little better than that, is because it is not really about music. Cooper was strongly influenced by Jamie Bernstein’s memoir, “Famous Father Girl,” and in fine Hollywood fashion better realizes not what made her father famous but what he was really like. The man behind the myth.

“Maestro” is seemingly an ironic title. As the first American-born conductor to become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1957, Bernstein did away with many Old World formalities and grand maestro-esque titles. He was Lenny to just about everybody.

Bisexual, Bernstein began an affair in 1971 with a dazzlingly brilliant young man from Pasadena, Thomas Cothran, which, when discovered by Felicia, led to a breakup of the Bernsteins’ marriage. Tom happened to be a classmate of mine at Pasadena High School and we became good friends. He’s Tommy in “Maestro” (he never would have put up with that from anyone other than Bernstein) and dismissed in the film as little more than a casual attraction.

Tom and Lenny lived together for a predictably incompatible year. Tom had little patience for Lenny’s late-night bouts of insecurity and, by his telling, was able to trim some of the excesses from Bernstein’s 1973 Norton Lectures, “The Unanswered Question,” at Harvard University.

Bernstein returned to Felicia when she was diagnosed with cancer in 1976, and her death in 1978 was a terrible trauma for him. He never appeared to get over it. Fraught family life is obvious dramatic biopic fodder. But left out of this saga was the importance of Tom, who collaborated with Bernstein until Tom’s death from AIDS, reportedly, in 1987.

Other than this, the glimpses of family life are no doubt accurate. Cooper consulted with the Bernstein siblings, and they gave him permission to shoot at the family house in Connecticut. Makeup makes Cooper look like a close facsimile of the old Bernstein and a sort-of facsimile of the dashing younger one. Likewise, Cooper convincingly mimics the voice of the elder Lenny. He sounds unpleasantly shrill as the hyperactive young conductor and composer taking classical music, Broadway and ballet by storm.

Cooper actorly copies Bernstein’s extravagant conducting style. But he lacks the mysterious magic and magnetism that could hold you and your emotions prisoner. Bernstein wasn’t an actor, he was a seeker. I have never witnessed the kind of shamanistic power in a performance that Bernstein, at his most elevated, could produce. Love or hate his gestures, they are Bernstein in the flesh making music, and they cannot be transferred to anyone else.

That Lenny’s life was chaotic hardly comes as a surprise. He was drawn to many things. He wrote groundbreaking Broadway scores (including “West Side Story”). He conducted with far more animation (and, for a long time, to the scorn of musicians, critics and uptight symphony-goers who wanted their music handed to them pristine). He wrote classical works that dealt with spiritual crises. It is often said that he was the greatest communicator music has ever known. His Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, nationally televised in the mid-1950s and early ’60s, attest to that. They brilliantly demystified classical music to millions of viewers young and old. I was one of them.

How much Bernstein’s private life personifies such artistry is always going to be a matter of interpretation. He obviously had a huge libido. He was drawn to an unprecedentedly wide range of musical activities and interests. He had an overpowering social conscience and involved himself in political activities.

He was highly literate, and delved deeply and tirelessly into philosophy, psychology and religion. He had an intense relationship with Judaism, questioning everything. He was gregarious and needed people. He was strikingly handsome and exuded sex appeal. He was a chain smoker to the end and drank way too much, put on weight in his 60s and had insomnia. He died in 1990 at 72 of emphysema. He was, above all, a conductor. Call him Lenny but do what he tells you, whether you like it or not.

He was on the road a lot of the time, and it is hardly surprising that Bernstein would have a varied, hyperactive sex life. But, by all accounts, he was a loving father and profoundly devoted, in his own way, to Felicia. There is enough interest in this for a pretty good Hollywood movie.

But that isn’t what made Bernstein exceptional. It is everything else. The fact is Bernstein didn’t have all that much time for family. He was doing a thousand things. When home, moreover, he worked like crazy, composing, studying scores, reading and writing. (He was said to practice the piano very little.)

Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 1963.

(Otto Rothschild / The Music Center)

In the end Lenny’s love for music was the love he could share with the world, but that is far more difficult for an actor to convey. In addition, we’ve seen so much Bernstein onscreen that anyone else trying looks like an AI fake.

Copying Bernstein’s conducting is even more problematic. Cooper impressively mimics Bernstein’s movements in a performance of the apotheosis of Mahler’s Second Symphony at the Ely Cathedral in London, which Bernstein filmed. But you can’t mimic essence. “Don’t copy me,” Bernstein regularly told student conductors.

Worse, though, is the soundtrack, bits and pieces of Bernstein’s music mainly with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. The recorded sound is bombastic; instrumental balances, grotesque; the conducting, bland. Had “Maestro” explored Bernstein as musician and shaman more thoroughly, it would have had to show that this soundtrack, which needs to be the heart of the film, goes against everything Bernstein stood for.

The good news is that “Maestro” may turn out to be good enough to promote a small wave of maestromania. Avoid the soundtrack recording at all costs: It is a headache-making mix track from Bernstein hell. But Bernstein’s career happens to have been very well documented on recording and video, and nearly all of it remains readily available on vinyl, CD, DVD, Blu-ray and streaming.

Watch a Young People’s Concert and you’ll likely find one is not enough. If you want to know what Bernstein really thought about love, listen to his “Serenade (After Plato’s Symposium),” a love letter to Felicia that is also a warning that he was a rapturous and vivacious lover with an endless appetite. Bernstein’s recordings of this quasi-violin concerto with Gidon Kremer as soloist make the rapture absolutely real.

Irving Berlin was a Jewish immigrant who loved America. As his 1938 song “God Bless America” suggests, he believed deeply in the nation’s potential for goodness, unity and global leadership.

In 1940, he wrote another quintessential American song, “White Christmas,” which the popular entertainer Bing Crosby eventually made famous.

But this was a profoundly sad time for humanity. World War II – what would become the deadliest war in human history – had begun in Europe and Asia, just as Americans were starting to pick up the pieces from the Great Depression.

Today, it can seem like humanity is at another tipping point: political polarization, war in the Middle East and Europe, a global climate crisis. Yet like other historians, I’ve long thought that the study of the past can help point the way forward.

“White Christmas” has resonated for more than 80 years, and I think the reasons why are worth understanding.

Yearning for unity

Christmas in America had always reflected a mix of influences, from ancient Roman celebrations of the winter solstice to the Norse festival known as Yule.

Catholics in Europe had celebrated Christmas with public merriment since the Middle Ages, but Protestants often denounced the holiday as a vestige of paganism. These religious tensions spilled over to the American colonies and persisted after the Revolutionary War, when slavery divided the nation even further.

After the Civil War, many Americans pined for national traditions that could unify the country. Protestant opposition to Christmas celebrations had relaxed, so Congress finally declared Christmas a federal holiday in 1870. Millions of Americans soon adopted the German tradition of decorating trees. They also exchanged presents, sent cards and shared stories of Santa Claus, a figure whose image the cartoonist Thomas Nast perfected in the late 19th century.

The Christmases that Berlin and Crosby “used to know” were those of the 1910s and 1920s, when the season expanded to include the nation’s first public Christmas tree lighting ceremony and the appearance of Santa Claus at the end of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Despite these evolving secular influences, Christmas music and entertainment continued to emphasize Christianity. Churchgoers and carolers often sang “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World.”

‘The best song anybody ever wrote’

Berlin’s inspiration for the song came in 1937, when he spent Christmas in Beverly Hills. He was near the film studios where he worked but far from his wife, Ellin – a devout Catholic – and the New York City home in Manhattan where they had always celebrated the holiday with their three daughters.

Being apart from Ellin that Christmas was particularly difficult: Their infant son had died on Dec. 26, 1928. Irving knew his wife would have to make the annual visit to their son’s grave by herself.

By 1940, Berlin had come up with his lyrics. In his Manhattan office, he sat at his piano and asked his arranger to take down the notes.

“Not only is it the best song I ever wrote,” he promised, “it’s the best song anybody ever wrote.”

Berlin had connected his lonesome Christmas to the broader turmoil of the time, including the outbreak of World War II and fraught debates about America’s role in the world.

This new song reflected his response: a dream of better times and places. It evoked a small town of yesteryear in which horse-drawn sleighs crossed freshly fallen snow. It also imagined a future in which dark days would be “merry and bright” once again.

This was a new kind of Christmas carol. It did not mention the birth of Jesus, angels or wise men – and it was a song that all Americans, including Jewish immigrants, could embrace.

Berlin soon took “White Christmas” back to Hollywood. He wanted it to appear in his newest musical, one that would tell the story of a retired singer whose hotel offered rooms and entertainment, but only on American holidays. He titled the film “Holiday Inn” and pitched it to Paramount Pictures, with Crosby as the lead.

Fighting for ‘the right to dream’

Raised in Spokane, Washington, Crosby had launched his music career in the 1920s. A weekly radio show and a contract with Paramount led to stardom during the 1930s.

With his slim build and protruding ears, Crosby did not look the part of a leading man. But his easygoing demeanor and mellow voice made him immensely popular.

“Holiday Inn” premiered in August 1942. Reviewers barely mentioned the song, but ordinary Americans couldn’t get enough of it. By December it was on every radio, in every jukebox and, as the Christian Science Monitor newspaper noted, in nearly “every home and heart” in the country.

The key reason was the nation’s entry into World War II.

“White Christmas” was not overtly patriotic, but it made Americans think about why they fought, sacrificed and endured separation from their loved ones. As an editorial in the Buffalo Courier-Express concluded, the song “provided a forcible reminder that we are fighting for the right to dream and for memories to dream about.”

This made it a song all Americans could embrace, including those not always treated like Americans.

Affirming faith in humanity

Berlin and Crosby didn’t set out to change how Americans celebrate Christmas. But that’s what they ended up doing.

Their song’s universal appeal and phenomenal success launched a new era of holiday entertainment – traditions that helped Americanize the Christmas season.

Like “White Christmas,” popular songs such as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (1943) tapped into a longing for being with friends and family. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (1949) and other new songs celebrated snow, sleigh rides and Santa Claus, not the birth of Jesus.

“White Christmas” had already sold 5 million copies by 1947 when Crosby recorded “Merry Christmas,” the first Christmas album ever produced. On the album, “White Christmas” appeared alongside holiday classics such as “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

Hollywood followed suit. In the popular 1946 film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” for example, bonds of family and friendship proved their value just in time for Christmas.

Faith was affirmed, but it was a faith in humanity.

Over the coming decades, Christmas entertainment continued to reach new audiences.

The upbeat songs of Phil Spector’s 1963 album “A Christmas Gift for You,” for example, appealed to baby boomers. Producers also catered to younger audiences with television specials such as “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

Hollywood then rediscovered Christmas during the 1980s, largely because of “A Christmas Story,” a film that didn’t exactly view Christmas through rose-colored glasses. While satirizing the chaos and angst of the holiday season, the film nonetheless embraced Christmas, warts and all. A steady stream of Christmas films followed – “Scrooged,” “Home Alone,” “Elf” – where themes of nostalgia, family and togetherness were ever-present.

Since the 1940s, the Christmas season has become even more inclusive. A 2013 Pew Research survey found that 81% of non-Christians in the U.S. celebrate Christmas. Yes, the holiday has also become more commercial. But that, too, has made it all the more American.

Amid these changes, Irving Berlin’s song has been a holiday mainstay, reminding listeners of what makes them not just American, but human: the importance of home, a longing for togetherness and a shared hope for a better future.

“They got a vibe that just feels right.”

That’s how Brian Lauritzen describes his first reaction to KUSC-FM’s programming when he tuned in two decades ago as a 20-year-old in Tennessee. A trained cellist and journalist, he knew he wanted to work in radio, but where? Lauritzen listened to streamed programs on the internet around the country — “And I kept coming back to KUSC.”

The way the hosts talked about music was so compelling, he says, that it inspired him to apply for a job at KUSC — and then move across the country when he got it. Since then, Lauritzen’s role at the station has evolved. He now hosts the weekday afternoon drive on Classical KUSC, nationwide concert broadcasts of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the choral music program A Joyful Noise.

KUSC has grown as well. In 2011, USC acquired KDFC in San Francisco and expanded the classical network to 10 cities, including Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Ventura, Oxnard, Monterey and Ukiah. The radio network known as Classical California now reaches around 1.5 million listeners per month. KUSC alone has the largest classical radio audience in the country, reaching more than 900,000 listeners each month over the air. KDFC and the other stations add another 500,000 radio listeners, with an additional 185,000 from the Classical California online streams online.

Part of what makes it so popular, Lauritzen says, is the vibe — which he now attributes to where it is. “California is at the leading edge of the arts in this country and at the leading edge of what classical music organizations are doing,” he says. “KUSC is part of that; there’s an openness and curiosity about ideas here. We’ve always been interested in what’s new, what’s next, and what’s the way forward. That shows up in the way we talk about classical music.”

KUSC’s Trojan roots

In 1946, thanks to a gift from USC alumnus George Allan Hancock, an oil magnate and cello player for the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, the university built a 250-foot radio tower atop the Hancock Foundation building on campus. Students began broadcasting on Oct. 24, 1946, on an FM band that was so new they identified themselves as “Frequency Modulated KUSC Radio.”

The broadcast was limited to a 10-mile radius from the USC campus, but more than 1,000 students nationwide applied for admission to the USC radio department. According to the publication Radio Life, USC was “the first privately endowed institution in American educational history to own and operate its own radio station and the first to operate both AM and FM stations.”

Throughout those seven decades, KUSC has created opportunities for local communities to access classical music in novel ways. KUSC has broadcast the performances of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 1978, as well as Los Angeles Opera, Pacific Symphony and many other local groups. The station also sponsors the concert season of the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles and hosts interactive events at the Watts Learning Academy and schools in Berkeley, Calif.

Discovering new classical music

“Our charge … is to make sure that our playlist reflects [California’s] community and diversity,” Lauritzen notes. The station plays music by living composers and carefully curates programs to reflect that charge.

“There’s tons of great music out there that hasn’t had a wider audience because of historical reasons,” he says, citing compositions by female or Black composers from the 18th century that were largely suppressed. “We’re still in the discovery process for a lot of that music.”

Nuestra Música, which plays classical music from Spanish-speaking countries and is streamed in Spanish and English, is one such program. “It’s an honor to expose people to music from parts of the world where they thought classical music didn’t exist,” host Brisa Siegel says. “So many listeners have told me, ‘I’m so glad I can understand the context of what I’m listening to.’ That [reaction is] so refreshing.”

That philosophy extends to drawing new — and younger — audiences, including Trojans.

On Oct. 31, Classical California launched an on-demand web stream called Arcade to explore the intersections between video game music and classical music. Instead of polarizing audiences, it has brought gamers and older audiences together to discover new music. In The New York Times, Arcade host Jennifer Miller Hammel, an opera singer who also hosts KUSC’s The Morning Show and The Opera Show, said, “Our big mission statement is ‘nurturing a love of classical music for all,’ and I take that ‘for all’ portion of the statement quite literally.”

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiTW_Rt9Ep8[/embed]

Discovering Trojan musicians

In October, the station partnered with the USC Thornton School of Music to launch a concert series called In the Halls of Thornton. The program spotlights compositions by faculty and performances by students. “It’s a resparking of a program that Thornton had at KUSC many years ago,” explains Cristian Grases, professor and vice dean of the USC Thornton classical division.

This year’s performances, which include music from ensembles, concertos and solo compositions,  were recorded in 2021 and 2022; next fall’s show will feature performances from 2023 and 2024.

Broadcasting USC Thornton’s “greatest hits” to worldwide audiences through the Classical California network of stations is not just a point of pride (“We’re so proud of the level of music-making we do at the school,” Grases says); it also motivates students. “The show has ignited [in them] a passion for having the best possible material for recitals and concerts.”

“I’ve always liked how KUSC goes the extra mile to present classical music in a way that also tells stories,” Grases says. With ‘In the Halls of Thornton,’ KUSC highlights a different aspect of the music school in each show. “Telling the story of a particular student or faculty member with performances and recitals — using a narrative — makes the music more compelling,” he adds.

Host Suraj Partha, who graduated from USC Thornton in 2019 with a bachelor’s in jazz, agrees that sharing Trojan-made music on air is a great way to showcase USC. “Being connected to USC brings a lot of youth into [KUSC],” Partha says. “It’s a reminder that young people are making this music right now, and we play some of it. We also play some of their teachers’ music on air because they’re really important professionals in the field.”

Working at KUSC makes complete sense to Partha as a Trojan. “The university educates people, then tells students to go out into the world and make an impact,” he says. “That’s exactly what we do at KUSC — we provide a service for our listeners.”

“Whether that means helping them calm down on their way to work, going to sleep, or during important moments in their life,” Partha adds. “We’ve had amazing, touching stories about people’s experiences of grief or joy when they’ve connected that with a piece of music on our airwaves. Those are all things that we do.”

5. The Beatles: “Here, There and Everywhere”

With all due respect to the many (many) mixes I compiled for The Amplifier this year, the most important playlist I made in 2023 was the one my sister Chelsea and her now-husband Andrew asked me to make for their wedding party. I was beyond honored, and if I do say so myself, my most ingenious move was including my own parents’ wedding song, “Here, There and Everywhere.” That’s what you get when you call upon a professional playlister. (Listen on YouTube)

6. Taylor Swift: “My Tears Ricochet”

Ah, 2023: The Year of the Eras Tour. I went in May with my friend Lauren; not to brag, but we have been besties for even longer than Taylor and Abigail have. This is one of those songs I reached for this year when I was really going through it, emotionally speaking, and I needed a little therapeutic wallowing. When she played it live, I hollered along until I was hoarse. (Listen on YouTube)

7. Drake: “Know Yourself”

In July, I went to Toronto on assignment, pulled an all-nighter to file a story, and then arrived at the airport only to be told that all the flights from Toronto to New York had been canceled … for the next three days. If you flew anywhere at all this summer, you might also recognize this experience as being “very 2023.” So for about 72 strange, liminal hours, I found myself, quite literally, runnin’ through the Six with my woes. This became my personal theme song: I am now convinced it is about walking the length of Spadina Avenue while on hold with an airline. (Listen on YouTube)

8. Jacques Dutronc: “Et Moi, et Moi, et Moi”

The first rule of travel, at least for Amplifier readers: Always listen to the local radio stations. While on vacation in Belgium this fall, my boyfriend and I found a Brussels station that we played constantly in our hotel. It featured a mix of standard American “classic rock” and whatever the French-speaking version of that format is. Among our discoveries were Laurent Voulzy’s bonkers, bilingual “Rockollection” and this bouncy, absolutely infectious 1966 bop by the French singer Jacques Dutronc. Now every time I want to remember how much fun we had in Belgium, I listen to this song. (Listen on YouTube)

9. Elvis Costello & The Attractions: “Every Day I Write the Book”

Call the title of this song an … aspirational mantra for my year. I’m currently working on the manuscript of my first book, and man, is it difficult to carve out the time to write a book while working full-time. Or doing, like, anything else in your life. Hats off to any and all who have pulled it off — I look forward to being among your ranks soon. But this was a phrase I sometimes hummed to myself on the many days when I wasn’t able to sit down and work on the book in a more traditional sense. I know every day I’m subconsciously working on it, too: Mulling over research, collecting unexpected bits of inspiration, making connections that will someday emerge on the page. Oh yeah, and I caught one of Elvis Costello’s shows when he played a residency at the Gramercy Theater this February, too. That was awesome. (Listen on YouTube)

10. The Marvelettes: “Please Mr. Postman”

Deliver the (news)letter, the sooner the better! Hey, you know what else happened in 2023? I started writing The Amplifier. Thanks to each one of you for reading, listening and helping to create such a vibrant community of music lovers. Here’s to 2024. (Listen on YouTube)