Interview transcript
Melody was a senior in high school when she wrote her letter to Leonard Bernstein from her home in Burlington, Vermont. I tracked her down via her professional website and we agreed to speak in May of 2024. Melody was the first of Bernstein’s correspondents I ever spoke to, and listening to her interview still brings back the excitement I felt at the start of this project. She spoke about her lifelong passion for creativity, music and music education and the impact that Bernstein had on her musical development.
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December 1963
Dear Mr. Bernstein,
I know you must be very busy but I am still secretly hoping that you might perhaps write a reply to me when convenient.
I am a senior in high school, and an avid cello student. Although I’ve taken lessons only 2 years, I have advanced quite rapidly with the help of a very gifted and wonderful teacher, friend – and woman. I’ve been encouraged by many wonderful musicians to continue in the field of music, and although I like English, French, History etc. (and probably would make more money in those fields) I find I’m most happy surrounded by music, & I feel I would like to breathe in music every day for the rest of my life.
I love ‘cello more than anything else in the world, and maybe, as the saying goes with no conceit, I was born to play the big, awkward, beautiful instrument. But as I was listening to the beautiful sounding New York Philharmonic on the Young People’s Concert, I noticed that there was not one woman in the entire orchestra. If a woman can show that she is every bit as good as a male player, why can’t she, too, be given the honor of playing in the top orchestras. Why must her sex be the predominant factor in judging what she may do in her life. If her hands can do the job better than a man and she feels the music from the bottom of her soul as well as any man, why is she still limited in her career?
You probably are thinking I am just a confused teenager trying to change the world.
Well, I am confused, and perhaps I am trying to be another Dorothea Dix, or maybe I just want assurance that all the earnest practicing I’ll be doing in the next 10 years will not be in vain. For my goal, as you may have already guessed, is to play under you in your orchestras as an artist. Is this goal too unrealistic?
Thank you for reading this letter and no matter what your answer, thank you for giving young teenagers like me a deeper appreciation and love for all music by your devotion to the musical field.
Sincerely,
Cheryl Melody Baskin
P.S. I still like boys ……
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I grew up in Vermont – in Burlington, Vermont. I think my heart is still there,
even though I’m in Massachusetts, my roots and the Lake and – Lake Champlain it’s called – it’s just beautiful there. I was there for 18 years until I went to college. My father was a jeweller, and he had a jewellery store. He also made jewellery, and he also loved to write rhyming poetry. So every letter, every card, would be that. And my mother was an opera singer, just the most beautiful lyric soprano voice, and she also loved to write. She wrote very loftily – big words, she studied the dictionary for fun.
And my grandmother as well was a coloratura singer, and so singing was a large part of my life, and she pushed me in front of an audience when I was three – to sing. And I remember, I actually remember, it got imprinted in my memory, where I remember the people sitting there, and then I remember them clapping – I didn’t know people did that, you know – and smiling. And I remember thinking, ‘this feels good’, or something like that. It really made me want to keep doing that, you know? And when I think about it, she was definitely a feminist, if you want to label. I don’t like labels, but – and my grandmother, as well. My father was from the old school. He really felt a woman’s place was in the home. She went out anyway and acted in plays and sang in concerts and did it anyway. So that was my model.
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My cello teacher in high school, her name is / was Flora Kinsey, and I adored her. She couldn’t have been a better first cello teacher for me. You know, just very … more of a friend, and, you know, kind, and made it interesting. It was just a delight. I would go to her house and you know, she’d give me lessons. And it was lovely. It was lovely until … I also loved to be in plays. And so the play I was in turned out … it was so good, everybody was such a good ensemble, that it wound up being in a contest in the state. And she told me that I had to make a choice between cello and being in the play. And that was just horrible. And I wound up not making the choice. I wound up doing both, the way strong-minded people do.
But that was the only time where we had, you know, a clash, you know. Because I just think there are so many parts of us to express. It’s true: focus is a power. It really is a power. Maybe, if I had focused totally on cello, I would have been better than I was in it. But I have always been someone who likes to, you know, experiment in the creative arts – whether it’s singing, writing, performing, composing, playing the cello, teaching, you know, I just love doing all of it.
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Well now, I do want to say that Leonard Bernstein really was … he was … what’s the right word? He was like a mentor, but he was like a guide toward feeling the emotion of music. More than anyone else. I had … and even though it was through the television in my high school years, watching young people’s concert, he had a way of making classical music understandable, and emotional; and I would understand the emotion behind the phrases by his lively expressions in his face, in the way he used his arms, the way he explained everything so clearly. And the way … one of the things I loved, and I know it was dramatic was, you know, the way he would move his hair while he would be conducting. And so I actually, I picked up the emotion behind the music more than … I’m not a great rhythm person. I have a difficult time. I’ve always had a difficult time with metronomes and, you know. But I do feel life with my heart and music, you know, with my heart. And so I love to glean the emotion from what I’m singing or playing.
And I remember in high school, I was in the New Englands … I forget what the full name is … but certain people were selected to be in the orchestra – from New England. And I was way in the back and the judges were looking at all of us to see who they would put further and further up, right? I wasn’t that good, but I did feel the music, and I did what I call a Leonard Bernstein, where I, you know, I swayed with the music, I moved my head, and all of a sudden, I got a tap on the shoulder and I was told to go to first chair, which was terrifying and wonderful at the same time.
But I think, you know, when you’re expressing music, all of you, you know, you don’t want to seem like you’re a robot, and it’s only rhythm. And it’s … it needs to be the whole thing, but the emotion is what opens people’s hearts, you know, or gives them different emotions – anger, calm, whatever, you know.
So he really … I would watch on my black and white TV because that’s what they had in the old days, you know. It was in the living room and the kitchen was close to it, and I would be like, and I was just fascinated with him. I was on my own watching them. I don’t remember anybody, my sister or my mother watching them with me because I was probably, according to that letter, I was a sophomore, I think, or I was a sophomore when I took when I picked up the cello. So I was a senior when I wrote him. So I don’t know how long the show had been going on or, you know, when I had first started seeing it. But all I know is I don’t think I missed any once I knew it was on.
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Now, the letter I wrote that you sent me and I reread – that surprised me. I didn’t know what I wrote him. I thought it would just thank him for all he, you know, offered as a musician and as a human being, you know, to make music come alive for kids and beyond. But I wrote him about … it was a very feminist kind of letter. I asked him why there were no women in the orchestra. That was like … I was … I was shocked! I have no memory of being that person or, you know, writing that you know that from that stance. And you know. And then asking him, you know, you know, doesn’t a woman feel the emotion in the same way … and don’t they … you know… have, you know, why aren’t there … why aren’t there any women in your orchestra? That was interesting just to see that I wrote that.
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I just thought he was mesmerizing and magnetic and sincere and fun. And, you know, there are not too many people like that. They’re either so perfectionistic that it makes you uptight and makes you feel like you … if you can’t do it perfect, then why do it kind of thing, you know. And then of course, at Hart College of Music, I had many conductors in the orchestra, so I know that each conductor, you know, sends down to everyone in the orchestra, their personality, and their preferences, their predilections. So if they’re very strict and very, you know, ‘it’s got to be this way’, you know, everybody’s a little uptight and it just filters down to everybody; and if the person is more fun and you know, magnanimous and wants us to, you know, have a sudden crescendo and, you know, like, play with it, you know, then that makes everybody feel differently.
And I’ve carried that … like I had my own music school for babies through age six for 19 years. And I also taught in the public schools up to sixth grade … music, and it really … I think I brought a lot of what Bernstein was all about to all the ages that I taught – to feel the emotions, and ‘can we say this forte?’ ‘Can we sing this pianissimo?’ And then they would learn about what it means by doing it and I’d have a gesture for it. ‘How many ways can you sing it this way?’ ‘Can you sing it another way?’ ‘Can you make up a new tune?’ ‘Can you make up new words to that tune?’ I’m all about creativity as well. I’m very much into … I’m fascinated with creativity and where it comes from and where that word came from and that idea. But I think, you know, a lot of the roots happened because of who he was and what stage I was in at that point, and how open and ready I was to absorb certain things, you know, that fit my personality.
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The other day we were in a van to come back from the airport, and the driver, very unusually, was playing classical music. I mean, when does somebody do that? He said he does it to relax and it relaxed me. I was like, ‘can you put that on louder?’ and he was … he was shocked because people probably don’t say that very often.
Yeah, it’s kind of like it’s not, it doesn’t seem as valued as it should be in our society and our culture and listened to maybe as much as it would be of value to people to do so. You know, there’s so much to choose from – whatever period the, Vivaldi, or whatever period, you can choose and say, ‘well, this affects me, I like it’, or ‘I don’t, this is not for me’, you know. But I think it needs maybe a little more PR, it needs more Leonard Bernstein’s in the world, you know.