Leonard J[ordan] Lehrman was born in Kansas, on August 20, 1949, but grew up in Roslyn, NY, becoming the youngest (and longest) private composition student of Elie Siegmeister

Elie Siegmeister

Elie Siegmeister was an American composer, educator and author.His varied musical output showed his concern with the development of an authentic American musical vocabulary...

 (1909–1991). Since Aug. 3, 1999, he has resided in Valley Stream, NY.

Lehrman's works number 204 to date, including 10 operas and 6 musicals, and have been heard throughout Europe, North America, Israel, Australia, and at the United Nations. His setting of Abel Meeropol (Lewis Allan)'s poem "Conscience" for chorus and orchestra won the 2002 Sunrise/Sunset Competition of the Brookhaven Arts Council and was premiered at the Brookhaven Choral Festival with an orchestra of 55 and a chorus of 160 on July 13, 2002. Editor 1999-2002 of Opera Today (the publication of The Center for Contemporary Opera), he has worked professionally for over four decades as conductor, coach, accompanist, translator, stage director, producer and critic for Opera Monthly (of which he was Associate Editor 1991-94), WBAI, the Metropolitan Opera (Assistant Chorus Master 1977-78), Bel Canto Opera, After Dinner Opera, Aviva Players, the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus and the Jewish Music Theater of Berlin (both of which he founded), the Jewish People's Philharmonic Chorus, the Workmen's Circle Chorus, the Oceanside Chorale, the Bronx Opera

Bronx Opera

The Bronx Opera is a Bronx, New York opera company founded in 1967 by artistic director and music director Michael Spierman.The company performs two operas a year, both with full orchestra, one lesser known opera in the fall, and an opera from the Standard repertoire in the spring.Performances are...

 (which commissioned his translation of Emmanuel Chabrier

Emmanuel Chabrier

Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas , songs, and piano music as well...

's Une Education Manquée for their January 2006 production), and various regional, community and professional companies throughout the United States, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
He also translated, adapted and directed the U.S. premieres of two major works by Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

 with music by Hanns Eisler

Hanns Eisler

Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...

: Days of the Commune (Harvard & Yale, Mar. 1971) and The Roundheads & the Pointedheads (Cornell, Nov. 1973). In Nov. 1983, as Studienleiter and Kapellmeister at Theater des Westens, he became the first Jew to conduct Fiddler on the Roof! in the city of Berlin.

Since 1987, he has given over 500 concert performances together with soprano Helene Williams (they were married by Cantor Charles Osborne at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue

Stephen Wise Free Synagogue

The Stephen Wise Free Synagogue is a synagogue located at 30 West 68th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan.In 1905, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise then serving a congregation in Portland, Oregon, was under consideration as Rabbi of Temple Emanu–El in New York City, but withdrew his name...

 July 14, 2002), including numerous productions of his own stage works, and concert tours of Europe (7 times), Canada, Hawaii, Australia, and Israel: In 1998 they gave the first Yiddish song recital in Bayreuth, Germany during the Wagner Festival, at Pianohaus Steingraeber, on the invitation of Wolfgang Wagner

Wolfgang Wagner

Wolfgang Wagner was a German opera director. He is best known as the director of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951 until the latter's death in 1966...

. On July 1, 2006 they performed at the Felicja Blumental Music Center in Tel Aviv, singing, among other things, Leonard's translation of the "Shir L'Shalom," the Israeli song which Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin

' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....

 sang the night he died, Nov. 4, 1995. Their audience included Leonard's cousin, former Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo "Cheech" Lahat, who had stood on the platform with Rabin that night.

Elie Siegmeister called Leonard "my continuator," while Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

 dubbed him "Marc Blitzstein's dybbuk."
Blake Eskin interviewed him on that subject, for Nextbook

Nextbook

Nextbook is a nonprofit, Jewish organization founded in 2003 to promote Jewish literature, culture, and ideas. The organization sponsors public lectures, commissions books on Jewish topics, and publishes an online magazine, Tablet Magazine....

.

As the leading living expert on the works of Marc Blitzstein

Marc Blitzstein

Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...

 (1905–1964), 20 of which he has adapted/reconstructed/completed, including Tales of Malamud (Winner, 1978 Off-Broadway Award for "most important event of the season"), Lehrman was chosen by the Blitzstein Estate to edit The Marc Blitzstein Songbook, published by Boosey & Hawkes in 3 volumes (1999, 2001, 2003), and by Greenwood Press to complete the Blitzstein bio-bibliography in their series (published by Praeger Sept. 30, 2005). In February 2001, under contract with the Blitzstein Estate, he completed the vocal score of Blitzstein's magnum opus, the opera Sacco and Vanzetti, having led a symposium on the subject at the National Opera Association convention in Boston in Dec., 1995. He completed the orchestral score in October 2003. It is available from Theodore Presser. The opera was presented semi-staged with piano accompaniment by The White Barn Theatre in Westport, CT in Aug. 2001. The Aug. 19, 2001 performance is posted on YouTube, along with several other operas of Lehrman's, including The Family Man (after Mikhail Sholokhov) and the trilogy Tales of Malamud (after Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...

): Idiots First (completion of work begun by Marc Blitzstein), Suppose A Wedding, and Karla. Also on YouTube are two productions each of his E.G.: A Musical Portrait of Emma Goldman (with Karen Ruoff Kramer) and The Booby Trap or Off Our Chests (with Sydney Ross Singer, on the link between bras and breast cancer.)
Lehrman's bio-bibliography of Elie Siegmeister, co-authored with Kenneth O. Boulton, with an introduction by Herbert A. Deutsch, published by Scarecrow Press in 2010, received a rave book review in Music Library Association Notes (vol. 67 no. 3, March 2011, pp. 525-7) from Howard Pollack

Howard Pollack

Howard Pollack is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Music at the University of Houston.Howard Pollack studied piano with Jennie Glickman while attending James Madison High School...

, who wrote that it "deserves to be part of any serious music library's collection."

On Mondays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Lehrman can be found answering reference questions at the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Public Library. Monday evenings he conducts the Blaue Jung's/Hanseaten Deerns German Chorus in East Meadow, NY. His articles have appeared frequently in the Forward, Jewish Week, Jewish Currents, and Aufbau. He is currently Copy Editor and Critic-at-Large of The New Music Connoisseur and serves on the Advisory Board of Composers Concordance, having served in the past as an adjudicator for the National Music Theatre Network, the Center for Contemporary Opera, and the National Opera Association.

He has a B.A. cum laude in Music from Harvard College

Harvard College

Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

, a masters and a doctorate in music composition from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

, and a second masters in Library & Information Science from Long Island University, where he founded the Long Island Composers Archive. He also studied privately with Lenore Anhalt; Olga Heifetz; Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...

 (on a Fulbright grant); Erik Werba (in Salzburg and Ghent); Kyriena Siloti (at the Longy School); David Del Tredici, Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner and Lukas Foss (at Harvard); Karel Husa, Robert Palmer and Thomas Sokol (at Cornell); Tibor Kozma

Tibor Kozma

Tibor Kozma was an American conductor, pianist, accompanist, and vocal coach of Hungarian birth. He began his career as an opera conductor in Europe and Ecuador before emigrating to the United States in 1941; ultimately becoming a United States citizen in 1945...

, Wolfgang Vacano, Donald Erb and John Eaton (at Indiana); and was the youngest student in the first Performance Seminar in Chamber Music with the Guarneri Quartet in 1965. He also served as the youngest U.S. delegate to the International Music Congress in Moscow in 1971, and one of the oldest delegates to the International Youth Festival there in 1985.

Having been Music Director of Community Presbyterian Church in Malverne, NY 1992-2003, on May 1, 2003 he became Minister of Music at Christ Church Babylon, NY. On April 30, 2006 his title was changed to Director of Music/Composer-in-Residence. On September 7, 2006, he became Director of Music/Composer-in-Residence at St. George's Episcopal Church, Hempstead NY. After serving as Interim Organist at St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Perth Amboy NJ 10-11/2007 and Interim Organist/Choir Director, United Methodist Church Wayne NJ 11-12/2007, from Jan. 1, 2008 to June 30, 2010 he was Director of Music/Composer-in-Residence at United Methodist Church of Huntington/Cold Spring Harbor in Huntington, NY. He then served as Interim Organist/Music Director at New Dorp Moravian Church, Staten Island; St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Castleton, Staten Island; and Church of the Saviour in Denville NJ, before accepting a position in March 2011 as Organist at Community United Methodist Church of East Norwich, NY.

Career

Dr. Lehrman is listed in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians

Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians

Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians is a biographical dictionary of musicians.The first edition of Baker's, under the title A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, was published in 1900 by Theodore Baker; it has since gone through nine editions.The 5th edition of 1958, 8th edition of 1992,...

, 8th Edition, and in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of 20th Century Classical Musicians (1997), p. 780.

• Founder/Director of The Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus
• Founder/Director of the Opera-Musical Theatre Special Interest Group of The Naturist Society since 1989.

• Member of ASCAP, GEMA, the American Music Center, the American Guild of Organists, the Society for American Music, the Music Library Association (Founder of the Composers/Performers Roundtable), the American Civil Liberties Union, and The Naturist Society; Honorary Member, Federation of Canadian Naturists.
• Artistic Administrator of The Professor Edgar H. Lehrman Memorial Foundation, Inc.,
• Co-Founder Elie Siegmeister Society (with Helene Williams) and Court Street Music Instruction
• Archivist Emeritus of The Long Island Composers Alliance, Inc. (President 1991-98)

Discography

• Leonard Lehrman, Helene Williams, Lars Woodul, and the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus, "The Elie Siegmeister Centennial CD," Original Cast Records (2008)

• David Diamond, Leonard Lehrman, and Helene Williams, "Diamond Jubilee: Songs By David Diamond," Albany Records (2006)

• Leonard Lehrman, "The Marc Blitzstein Centennial Concert CD," performed by Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus & Soloists, Original Cast Records (2005)

• Lehman Engel, Herbert Haufrecht, Martin Kalmanoff, Robert Kurka, Leonard Lehrman, Joel Mandelbaum, Abel Meeropol, Earl Robinson, Elie Siegmeister, Kurt Weill, "The Abel Meeropol Centennial Concert," performed by Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus & Soloists, Original Cast Records (2003)

• Leonard Lehrman, Gregory Mercer, James Sergi, and Helene Williams, "A Marc Blitzstein Songbook," Original Cast Records (2001)

• Eleanor Cory, Herbert Deutsch, Lukas Foss, Morton Gould, Andre Hosza, Leo Kraft, Leonard Lehrman, Joel Mandelbaum, Angelo Musolino, Raoul Pleskow, Elie Siegmeister, Hale Smith, Serge Suny, performed by Leonard Lehrman, "Long Island Composers Alliance," Capstone (2000)

• Ralph Alan Dale, Daniel Dorff, Denise Broadhurst, Janis Sabatino Hills, Leonard Lehrman, Joel Mandelbaum, Angelo Musolino, Elie Siegmeister, Hale Smith, Mira J. Spektor, and Raymond VunKannon, "Helene Williams Sings More Songs Of Love," "Long Island Composers Alliance," Capstone (1999)

• Adele Berk, Leonard Lehrman, Elie Siegmeister, Jeanne Singer, and Albert Tepper, "Helene Williams Sings Songs Of Love", "Long Island Composers Alliance," Capstone (1998)

• Anne Watson Born, Becky Dale, Herbert Feldman, Frederick Frahm, Leo Kraft, Leonard Lehrman, Matthew Marullo, Akmal Parwez, Joseph Pehrson
  Joseph Pehrson
  - Life :Pehrson comes from Detroit, Michigan. He studied at the University of Michigan and Eastman School of Music. . His teachers include Leslie Bassett, Joseph Schwantner, Otto Luening and Elie Siegmeister. From 1992 to 1993 he was composer-in-residence at the University of Akron. Since 1983 he...
  
  , Abram M. Plum, Harriette Slack Richardson, George Selbst, Judi Silvano, "The William Cullen Bryant Bicentennial Concert," "Long Island Composers Alliance," Capstone (1995)

• Ronald Edwards, Leonard Lehrman, Helene Williams, "A [Marc] Blitzstein Cabaret," Premier Recordings (1990)

• Leonard Lehrman, Peter Schlosser, and Helene Williams, The Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus & Orchestra, "We Are Innocent: Rosenberg Cantata," Opus One (1989)

External links

• Leonard J. Lehrman site