Leonard Bernstein, the subject of the recent film Maestro, was a living paradox: a composer of hit musicals, a world-famous conductor, and a television star who, in the opinion of many musicians (including Bernstein himself), never lived up to his early promise. This informative and entertaining lecture-recital uses audio and video examples to survey the life and career of the most famous American classical musician in history.

About the Presenter: Allen Cohen is Professor of Music at Fairleigh Dickinson University. His compositions have been played in Carnegie Hall and across the United States and Europe. He has also written dance arrangements for Broadway musicals, scores for off-Broadway musicals and plays, and music for several films and many radio and television commercials. Allen has conducted three musicals on Broadway and many elsewhere. He is the author of Howard Hanson in Theory and Practice (Praeger/Greenwood) and the popular children’s book That’s So Funny I Forgot to Laugh! (Scholastic), and co-author of Writing Musical Theater (Palgrave Macmillan). He has served as a judge for the American Prize in music for many years, and he has presented papers about music and musical theater at conferences in New York City, Hawaii, Greece, and Germany.