Leon Botstein - Biography

Leon Botstein (born December 14, 1946 in Switzerland) is an American conductor and the President of Bard College (since 1975). Botstein is the music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and conductor laureate of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director and principal conductor from 2003-2010. He is also the founder and co-Artistic Director of the Bard Music Festival. He is a member of the Board of Directors of The After-School Corporation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding educational opportunities for all students. He also serves as the Board Chairman of the Central European University.

Botstein is a leading advocate of progressive education. He is the author of Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture and Judentum und Modernitaet and has published widely on music, education, history, and culture. He graduated at age 16 from the High School of Music and Art in New York, and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in music history. He credits David Landes and Harold Farberman as his mentors.

Botstein became the youngest college president in U.S. history at age 23, serving from 1970 to 1975 at the now-defunct Franconia College.

As music director of the American Symphony Orchestra, Botstein emerged as a significant proponent of "thematic programming," which attempts to assemble concert programs having a common theme grounded in literature, music history, or art. He also focused the ASO's programming on the performance of infrequently-performed works by major composers and the best examples of works by lesser-known composers, with a particular emphasis on U.S. premiere performances. In addition to the orchestra's main concert series at Carnegie Hall, Botstein inaugurated the Bard Music Festival with the participation of the ASO, a summer series which focuses on one composer each summer for an intensive series of concerts, lectures, and panel discussions. He also presents a series called "Classics Declassified," devoting each program to a piece from the standard orchestral repertory. Botstein lectures about the piece for about an hour, using the orchestra to provide illustrations for his talk, then performs the entire piece, then opens the floor to questions from the audience directed at him and at members of the orchestra. This series, originally presented at Columbia University's Miller Theater, proved so popular that it was moved to Symphony Space for the 2007–2008 season. He also inaugurated an important series of recordings of neglected masterpieces with the Telarc label, using the ASO and a variety of European orchestras.

Botstein is the brother of biologist David Botstein and husband of art historian Barbara Haskell. Both of Botstein's parents were physicians.

Awards

In 2010 Botstein was elected to the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States.

In 2009, Botstein was awarded a Carnegie Academic Leadership Award. The Carnegie Corporation annually chooses exceptional leaders of American higher education who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the realms of curricular innovation, reform of K-12 education and the promotion of strong links between their institution and their local communities.

In 2006, Botstein's recording of Popov's Symphony No. 1 and Shostakovich's Theme and Variations with the London Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Orchestral Performance.

In 2003, Botstein received the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1996, he received the Harvard Centennial Medal, an honor given by the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to recipients of graduate degrees from the School for their "contributions to society".

Bard College

Botstein became Bard College's 14th and current president in 1975. Botstein, who is also Bard's Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, has been a pioneer in linking the liberal arts and higher education to public secondary schools. In 1979, Botstein oversaw Bard's acquisition of Bard College at Simon's Rock, the oldest early college entrance program and the only accredited four-year early college to date. Along with administrators from Simon's Rock, he was instrumental in the founding of New York City's Bard High School Early College in 2001. During Botstein’s 35-year tenure, Bard has established eight graduate schools, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

Botstein has greatly extended Bard’s reach internationally, leading the creation of new programs on several continents. In partnership with Saint Petersburg State University, Bard established in 1997 the first liberal arts college program in Russia, Smolny College, which offers dual degrees from Saint Petersburg State University and Bard. In 1998, the Institute for International Liberal Education (IILE) was formed at Bard to advance the theory and practice of international liberal arts education. Bard’s other international programs include the Al-Quds Bard Partnership, a collaboration in Jerusalem between Bard College and Al-Quds University that was established in 2008 to improve the Palestinian education system; the International Human Rights Exchange (IHRE); the Program in International Education (PIE); and joint programs with American University of Central Asia and Central European University.

Botstein has also led Bard to become a regional and national leader in art and culture. In 1990, Bard opened the Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture, which now includes the Hessel Museum of Art. In 2003, the college opened the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, which houses two theaters, as well as dance and theater studios that provide rehearsal space for undergraduates. The Fisher Center is the home of the Bard Music Festival as well as Bard SummerScape, an annual festival of music, film, dance, and drama.

In February 2009, Botstein was accused by Joel Kovel of terminating Kovel from his position as professor at Bard in retaliation for the latter's political views, an accusation which Botstein denied.

Works

Botstein's written work includes Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, in which he argues that high school-level education after the tenth grade should be abolished in favor of a national early college system, as well as several other books in the fields of musicology and education. He is editor of The Musical Quarterly and a frequent contributor to periodicals focusing on music and education.

Public appearances

• Botstein was interviewed as a guest on The Colbert Report on June 4, 2007 and again on October 5, 2010.
• On August 12, 2009, Botstein appeared on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS to discuss the Al-Quds Bard Partnership, a groundbreaking collaboration in Jerusalem between Bard College and Al-Quds University.
• Botstein is regularly featured on Albany, New York-area NPR affiliate WAMC-FM.
• Botstein was the Keynote Speaker at the Stuyvesant High School 2007 Graduation on June 25, 2007
• He conducted the revival of John Foulds's World Requiem at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 11 November 2007.
• American premiere of the Herbstsymphonie (Autumn Symphony) by Austrian composer Joseph Marx on December 7, 2008 with the American Symphony Orchestra in Avery Fisher Hall, NY.

Literary works

• "The Compleat Brahms" (New York, 1999), editor
• The Musical Quarterly, editor
• "quasi una fantasia: Juden und die Musikstadt Wien" (Timms, Edward / Hanak, Werner / Botstein, Leon / Jüdisches Museum Wien ) (with 2 CDs; contributors: Karl Albrecht-Weinberger, Otto Biba, Philip V. Bohlman, Leon Botstein, Elisabeth Derow-Turnauer, Wolfgang Dosch, Albrecht Dümling, Tina Frühauf, Primavera Gruber, Michael Haas, Werner Hanak, Hartmut Krones, Elena Ostleitner, Michael Steinberg, & Sara Trampuz)

Listing by the American Philosophical Society for Leon Botstein as a new member

President, Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, Bard College; Coartistic Director, Bard Music Festival; Editor, The Musical Quarterly; Music Director and Conductor, American Symphony Orchestra; Music Director and Conductor, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra/Israel Broadcasting Authority

Additional sources

• Bigthink interview