Interview transcript
Unlike most of the correspondents I’ve spoken with, Charles Keedwell wrote to Bernstein twice – once in his mid-’30s, when he addressed the maestro himself, and signed the letter off informally as “Chuck”; and then again in his mid-’40s when he wrote to [Bernstein’s secretary] Helen Coates, and concluded with the more formal “Charles A. Keedwell.” Charles sadly passed away over a decade ago, but I connected with his son Mark via a family friend. We agreed to speak in June 2024. Mark painted a vivid picture of his father’s life, describing his penchant for playing classical records extremely loudly, his commitment to the Baháʼí faith, and why his Bernstein autograph was such a prized possession.
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January 24, 1962
Dear Mr. Bernstein,
I am not given to writing fan letters but I am impelled to drop you a line after having read the article in the February Issue of Show Business Illustrated.
Probably you don’t pay much attention to presentations of this kind but it made me very angry. It made me angry because it certainly does not represent my views nor those of so many people here in Ottawa.
I hate to admit it but we in this part of the country live in something of a cultural wasteland. In such an atmosphere it is hard to describe how much your recordings with the Philharmonic and your TV concerts mean to us. Believe me, they make all the difference and are looked forward to with great anticipation. Some of your records are not released in Canada so many of us have to go to the trouble of importing them but it is more than worth the effort.
I have been a great admirer of conductors like Reiner & Toscanini & have prized as practically the last word on classical standards, their interpretations. That was before your recordings began to appear with the Philharmonic. Now I find that I am acquiring & valuing your versions above the others.
Now I beg you to keep up the work. Whatever critics may say, you have brought more of the joy of music to many of us in the ‘grass roots’ than we get from any other source.
Incidentally, our family took off last summer for Tanglewood to hear your concert & found it tremendously exciting & moving. So how about a recording of the Symphony of Psalms & maybe even a new version of the Shapero?
In conclusion, let me thank you again so much for the great happiness your many-sided talents have brought us. Believe me, they are a bright light in a world that is not always too bright.
Yours sincerely,
Chuck Keedwell
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October 27, 1972
Attention: Miss Helen Coates
Dear Miss Coates:
I am writing this letter as a long-time and fervent admirer of Mr. Bernstein’s music, conducting and recordings. The latter, however, are the immediate stimulus for my contacting you at this particular time.
One of my favourite Bernstein recordings was that of Shapero’s Symphony for Classical Orchestra on Columbia Records. Unfortunately now, the plastic of my copy has deteriorated to the point where it is virtually unlistenable. When I tried to replace the copy I was told that the going price in New York for the disc is $30 – which, considering my family’s budget, puts it way out of reach. I was wondering, therefore, if Mr. Bernstein has re-recorded this Symphony – or at least the Adagietto Movement – and if so, whether you have any idea when it may be released. I seem to recall Mr. Bernstein’s having programmed the Symphony during his tenure as Musical Director of the Philharmonic.
There are two other of Mr. Bernstein’s recordings which I am most anxious to obtain – that of the William Schuman 8th Symphony (n Columbia which seems to be unavailable anywhere at any price, and also his recording of Foss’ Song of Songs & Ben Haim’s Sweet Psalmist of Israel, also on Columbia M56123. This latter recording appears to be obtainable in N.Y. – again at a price of 30 – & I realize that the Foss selection has, for some reason, recently been re-released on the CRI label. Any advice you could give me on these discs would be greatly appreciated. If only Columbia would let us have them again either on their Special Products Label or their Odyssey Series!
I do not intend to let this letter go on indefinitely but would you tell Mr. Bernstein that despite what the critics say, I think his Opera “Trouble in Tahiti” is just great and wish he would record it himself. I would also very much like to obtain a portrait of Mr. Bernstein – a recent one preferably – of high quality suitable for framing. I greatly admired Ken Heyman’s work in the “Private World of Leonard Bernstein” but I suppose his prices would be astronomical, assuming I could obtain a print. If you think it would be worth my contacting Heyman, could you give me his address or if not, do you have any other suggestions as to how I might get a hold of a suitable photograph. You have no idea of how frustrating it is to be so cut off from the mainstream of musical happenings etc as we are here in Ottawa and even in the larger cities of Canada.
Anyway, if you have been patient enough to bear with me this far, thank you. And if, by any chance, you can answer any or all of my queries, I would be more than pleased to hear from you. In any case, please convey to Mr. Bernstein my sincere appreciation for the tremendous amount of pleasure and happiness he has given people like myself. If he only knew!
Yours sincerely,
Charles A. Keedwell
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He grew up in a small town in Southern Ontario and didn’t really … really fit. People didn’t accept him for who he was. He was very bright. He excelled at university and then ended up being accepted at Harvard. So he and my mother moved down to … to attend there. He was there for three years, I guess it was. And he did all the course work associated with a PhD and then ran into a bit of a roadblock.
He had a fascination with what was called the China lobby, which was the attempts of the Chinese government to influence the American politicians to vote certain ways. And I guess it was a fairly controversial topic at that point. And so in order to get at the resources he needed, he needed to get permission from the Chinese government. They would only give it to him if they … he was going to allow them to review the text before it was actually delivered – submitted. Of course, his integrity wouldn’t allow him to do that, and neither would Harvard. He tried three different topics closely related over the period of a year or so and wasn’t able to crack that nut.
And then around that time, I was conceived and they decided ‘we don’t really want this guy to be an American citizen, so we’re going to move back to Ottawa so he can be Canadian’. And the rest his history. He started working for the federal government here. He started in Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, not for very long. I don’t think it appealed to him very much. Then he ended up going to Health and Welfare of Canada and really found that he fit in there. He became a speech writer for the minister. Did that for many years, travelled around the country with him. Writing speeches whenever it was necessary …
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You need to know that my father grew up with the intention of becoming a concert pianist. So when he was a teenager, for instance, he was the accompanist of the choir that my mother happened to be singing in well before they became parents, but … yeah, they had a five-year engagement, and he was constantly playing for them.
And I know from stories that he told me that his parents were not musical. They didn’t understand that interest of his, but it was very strong. And he would sneak away to his bedroom and listen to the radio – broadcasts of classical music concerts from the States mostly, every chance he got. So, it got to a point where he was very good.
But he realized that, in order to excel as a pianist, he would have to practice 6 hours a day probably, and then spend tremendous amounts of time away from his family. And that turned out to be the point of no going forward. So, he set it aside as a goal and concentrated on other things. But I guess for the last 40 years of my life, he had a nine-foot concert grand piano which he played.
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I was quite surprised to hear from you. I had no idea that the fan mail of Leonard Bernstein would be available to anybody and … actually, it’s great that it’s being used. It’s an interesting way of diving down underneath the stars, you know, and meeting people who are actually moved by the music.
I knew that he had written to Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, and received a response and so this wasn’t completely unusual for him, although I mean, he didn’t make a habit of it. I think there were probably only three fan mail letters that he ever wrote. So, two of them were to Lennie.
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So I don’t know whether you noticed, in that letter that you sent me, he talked about Tanglewood. That was one of my first memories of classical music. I was … what was I? Seven, I guess. My sister, Lisa was only five, and we were taken with the parents to Tanglewood in Massachusetts. I still remember lying on a blanket at night, looking into the shed at Tanglewood, watching Bernstein perform.
Any chance that they had to see particularly Bernstein, they would have … they would take that opportunity. They loved Massachusetts and Cape Cod. So it was on the way there and coming back that we would go.
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I remember one story that he told was of sitting in Tanglewood and Bernstein was about two or three rows up ahead. And he debated it with himself all the way through the concert as to whether to go and introduce himself, and he finally chickened out. And I think he kicked himself for not doing it.
It’s too bad. I think it would have been fulfilling in a way. But I suspect he was probably worried about being brushed off.
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In those days, he really wasn’t watching performances on television. There weren’t very many available. And … we didn’t, he didn’t have access to DVDs of Herbert von Karajan’s whatever version, you know. So he would just listen to the music, you know.
I think it … I think it appealed to him because it was more abstract, you know, more immediate. Whereas when you have performances in front of you, it can take away from the imagination that you can add to the movie. One of the few exceptions though that I know he really enjoyed seeing was a performance of Bernstein’s Mass. At the John F Kennedy Center. That really hit him hard. He was terribly moved by that.
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He had quite a music system. He would spend a lot of money and time getting the best equipment that he could afford and then blasting out music at great volume. Oh, my God. And in fact, I have to tell you, it put me off classical music. It really did. I’d heard so much of it and it was at such high volume – I could barely get away from it any time that I wanted to.
He was a bit of a flamboyant character. He really loved crescendos. And so Bernstein was able to perform them in a way that nobody else was able to. Of course, Bernstein introduced him to all kinds of composers that he might not have heard otherwise. He became a big fan of Mahler, for instance. I don’t know… it was a real love affair for a long, long time.
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And in a lot of cases, he would have five or six different versions of the same piece by … so he would … he would know all the different … nuanced differences between them. And could tell you which was probably the best of all.
He was an avid reader of Schwann magazine and Gramophone and constantly diving as deeply as he could into the sources of information about new recordings that were coming up. And as you saw from the letter, he was suggesting that Bernstein considered doing certain pieces that weren’t going to be lucrative to the company, so they wouldn’t bother.
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This is a photograph that was sent with Gershwin’s signature and then down below is the actual letter that he received. This is a bit of a prize possession in the Keedwell family.
And while we’re on the subject of photos, I’ll show you the one that Bernstein sent him. Had pride of place in their living room for many years. It’s very expressive … of the emotion that Bernstein was able to bring to the music, which is what … really was what my father resonated with.
I guess they were given pride of place because music was so important to my parents. Both of them. Yeah … I think they wanted to encourage their kids to be music lovers.
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I think that’s why he enjoyed Bernstein and Gershwin particularly because they were able to speak to the common man with great passion, with real directness, in a way that the old masters of classical music never really achieved. I mean, they have celebrated pieces of music for sure that are still listened to, but … but it was … it was a little more distant somehow from people’s daily lives.
He loved Bernstein’s Concerts for Young People. He thought that was a fantastic initiative. And I watched several of them over the years. So it opened my mind to the possibilities involved in listening – that it wasn’t just a passive act, but you had to actually participate in lots of important ways in order to get the full intensity of what was going on. So he … he really enjoyed that aspect of Bernstein.
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I’m in the process of editing and finalizing a series of waking dreams that my father had just about three or four years after that first letter that you were talking about. And they were actually interactions that he had with characters, if you like, inside himself. And they were in what he calls his “inner country.” And so one of the things that is a big focus for him….these were educational stories, telling him how to evolve, I think for the rest of his life. He was, let me see now, 30-years-old at this point when he was having the encounters.
And so I just wanted to read you a couple of things having to do with the subject that we’re talking about – music and specifically, the first one specifically about Lennie. So there’s not much content to this particular one, but the second one, I think you’ll find, carries a little bit more punch. So “the rose” is the name that his soul is given in this particular Now Book. I’ll just read this.
“The Rose said, now, don’t you understand what I’m getting at?” I’m not going to go into the whole background of that. “Life is not serious and sober the way you thought. In fact, God doesn’t like sober and serious people. They bore him. Take Freud. He was one of the serious ones, and he’s still got a long way to go. Even now he’s busy analyzing angels, and they get a kick out of it, shocking him just for the fun of it. But your boy, Lennie, he has it. Oh, he’s got problems, but God loves him very much because he’s joyful.” So that’s directly from his soul. That’s a message that he would agree with without any trouble whatsoever.