Leonard J. Lehrman
LEONARD J. LEHRMAN (ASCAP, GEMA) is the most prolific composer living on Long Island today, with 232 works in his catalog, including 12 operas, 7 musicals, 257 songs, 91 pieces for chorus and 81 for instruments, plus 18 adaptations and 64 translations, many of which have been heard on every continent except Antarctica, are posted on over 3,000 YouTube videos with over 400,000 views, and are published by Carl Fischer, Theodore Presser, and Transcontinental. The first person to hold the title of President of The Long Island Composers Alliance, 1991-98, during which time the organization doubled its membership and tripled the number of concerts it presented, he was LICA’s first Archivist and served as Archivist Emeritus, 1999-2018. He was also the first recipient of a Meet The Composer grant obtained by the Long Island Arts Council at Freeport, Winner of the first Brookhaven Choral Festival Composition Competition, and the first composer to be awarded the Long Island Creative Artist Grant by the NYSCA Decentralization Regrant Program. His music and performances may be heard on Opus One, Capstone, Original Cast, and Ravello; performances only on Premier and Albany. Centennial programs he has produced include tributes to Langston Hughes, Abel Meeropol, Marc Blitzstein, Lillian Hellman, Morris Schappes, Elie Siegmeister, Earl Robinson, Leonard Bernstein, J. Willard Roosevelt, and Rosa Luxemburg. His teachers included Elie Siegmeister (who called him "my continuator"), Earl Kim, David Del Tredici, David Lewin, Nadia Boulanger, Leon Kirchner, Robert Palmer, Karel Husa, John Eaton, and Donald Erb. He also worked with Leonard Bernstein and was the youngest student at the Guarneri Quartet's first Performance Seminar in Chamber Music. Having adapted/completed 20 of Blitzstein's unfinished works, he edited the 3-volume Marc Blitzstein Songbook (Boosey & Hawkes, 1999-2003), authored Marc Blitzstein: A Bio-Bibliography (Praeger, 2005), and co-authored Elie Siegmeister, American Composer: A Bio-Bibliography (Scarecrow, 2010). With his wife Helene Williams, he co-founded the Elie Siegmeister Society, The Opera/Musical Theatre Special Interest Group of The Naturist Society, and Court Street Music in Valley Stream. Formerly Assistant Chorus Master of the Metropolitan Opera and Chief Coach-Conductor at Theater des Westens in Berlin, where he founded the Juedischer Musiktheaterverein Berlin, he is also Founder/Director of the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus, Reference Librarian at Oyster Bay-East Norwich Public Library, High Holidays Conductor at The Metropolitan Synagogue, Pianist in The Dakule Trio, Music Director/Composer-in-Residence at Christ Lutheran Church in Rosedale, and Artist-in-Residence at Trinity Church, Roslyn. He has degrees from Harvard (B.A. cum laude), Cornell (M.F.A., D.M.A.), and Long Island University (M.S.L.S.), plus equivalencies from Indiana University (B.M. Piano, M.M. Conducting) and additional study at the Ecole Normale de Musique and Salzburg "Mozarteum," and taught at Cornell, Empire State College, and the first course ever in Jewish Opera at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Former Editor of The Dunster Drama Review, The Risley Review, and Opera Today; Associate Editor of Opera Monthly; and Copy Editor of The New Music Connoisseur, he currently reviews for SoundWordSight.com
THE NYCC
