Interview Transcript
Gary was in middle-school when he drew his portrait of Bernstein. He is unusual among Bernstein’s correspondents in that he neither wrote a letter, nor posted the picture himself. The drawing was his response to an optional assignment set by his piano teacher. The assignment was to watch one of Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on TV and then write about it. Where the rest of his peers submitted short essays, Gary was instead inspired to draw.
Gary is also relatively unusual among the correspondents I’ve spoken to in that he also had an opportunity to see Bernstein in person: a week after his piano teacher had posted his drawing to Bernstein, he would travel from Long Island to New York with his piano teacher and a small group of his peers to attend the dress rehearsal of one of Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. His teacher seems to have sent the portrait and the essays to Bernstein as evidence of her students’ enthusiasm for him, hoping that he would agree to meet the group after the dress rehearsal.
Drawing continued to be a life-long passion for Gary, whom I tracked down via his professional website. We spoke in late June 2024. The reception from the island wasn’t great, but with the help of my wonderful producer, I’ve been able to include some excerpts from our conversation. We talked about his memories of growing up among Jews in the ‘50s and how seeing Bernstein “in color” in the concert hall was even more impactful than watching him on black-and-white TV.
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My mother was a Jew, but she wasn’t from Eastern Europe, but her family was. And that was a huge source of great music and great music... You read about, you know, people in the Holocaust creating music, you know, to keep themselves sane and all that. Those Jews were very … and Russian Jews, the saying, came to America created orchestras in different cities and all of that, you know. And so I would imagine if she hadn’t married my crazy father, you know, that might have been more interesting. But she was non–musical. She couldn’t sing a note, you know, and then my father … they wouldn’t have been interested in going to Philharmonic or anything like that, if anything, the Broadway show, which is very typical even now of suburban people in New York. They all want to go see, you know, The Wiz – or whatever, you know.
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You know, my parents were very frugal. They thought of themselves as relatively poor, I think. We were able to … back in the 50s, you were able to buy a house for, like, $18,000 because all of these developments were coming out, you know, and they were trying to get people out of the city and into the suburbs. And so houses were considerably affordable. So somebody making $10,000 a year – like my father – and my mother, who worked part time, could afford to buy an 18,000 house. So we lived in a very nice neighbourhood.
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My parents were … were a bad fit, but they lasted for 31 years. And the thing they did best in the world was the jitterbug together. And the jitterbug was a precursor of the lindy from the 1930s and, ‘20s and ‘30s, very fast, very tricky. And occasionally they put a record on in the living room and they danced the jitterbug. And they were really good. Everything else together they did not do well; but the jitterbug was amazing. And dancing is a sexy thing, you know? And so I guess that kept them going for a while.
And so, yes, music was very much a part of my childhood. I would say we got a hi–fi in the mid ‘50s, had one of Frank Sinatra‘s first albums, something about swooning, and Ella Fitzgerald singing, Cole Porter ... we had albums, you know? And they also … either from … Maybe my elementary schools went on class trips to see musicals. I saw a lot of musicals as a child. I saw My Fair Lady. I fell in love with – it was an era of amazing musicals – and so I fell in love with the musical theatre. And that’s what maybe first got me interested in doing theatre myself. And so, which I have and continue to do.
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My sister took piano lessons, and I was probably jealous. She was older. She was not very good. And so, I wanted to take lessons, and I did. I was pretty good. I was pretty good. I was Claire’s best student. But I only took lessons from age eleven to thirteen and a half or something. And after that, she couldn’t teach me anymore. And she wanted to send me further up the island, but I was thirteen and a half, and my parents didn’t have a lot of money, so I didn’t show enough passion.
I knew I wasn’t gonna become a great pianist or anything like that, so I stopped. But I always played the piano since then. So … at about the same level as I did then, except I’m a little slower now. The problem was my hands weren’t being enough. And frankly, I wasn’t in love with classical music, frankly, you know?
And so, and I never found a great passion for classical music. I don’t listen to it a lot. I mean, there’s a few things that I love, but they’re kind of, you know, the trite things that everybody loves, you know, Carmen and, you know, and Music for an Exhibition or all those things that, you know, that are so accessible. I’m not much for risky music in a classical sense. Other arts are my passion. Poetry is my passion. Acting is my passion, drawing, as you know, is my passion.
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I was amazed by color TV, you know, ‘cause it was all black, you know. The television was amazing in the ‘50s. It was often live and some of the great theatre was done live on television. So television was a powerful thing. There were music things all the time. Every week, we’d watch … oh, what was it called? I don’t remember. There was a very big variety show – music variety show – every week that Bing Crosby or somebody famous would host, and they’d have all these acts. It was almost like British revue, you know, with magicians and all this stuff. And so that was big for television when I was growing up.
You know, Mary Martin doing Peter Pan was big – you’d watch that every year. They’d always show … and old movies were big. Even now, they are; but back then, they were big for kids. So you’d always watch, um, ‘Over the Rainbow’ … you’d always watch Wizard of Oz. Every year. The 1939 movie with Judy Garland was something you would watch – every Easter it was on, you know. And so music was a big part of television, certainly. Every … every pop singer worth their weight in gold had their own hour music show. Perry Como and Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland and Rosemary Clinton – they all had an hour show, you know? And so music was big.
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I mean, there’s always strange stories in our lives, but to have someone come to me 62 years after an event that I don’t remember doing – which is the drawing – and you wonder how … you know, just from a metaphysical point of view, you wonder about how many other things there are out there about yourself that you don’t even know about, you know, and it just shows up like this. I mean, most of my friends are thinking ‘this is bizarro’, you know?
I guess I do, too, since first of all, I don’t remember doing the drawing; and second of all, I had no idea who in the world sent this to the Library of Congress, and I doubt it was Claire, but maybe …
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All I can think of is that Claire, once we got back … she often took us to New York, ‘cause Long Island is very close. I don’t know if you know the topography, but Long Island is, you know, probably, you know, half hour, 45–minute train ride or a car ride. And she took us somehow – and there were only six or seven students, if I remember – to New York for many things: we saw Julius Rudel conduct, and I met Mary Martin after a matinee of Sound of Music, and there were all sorts of things that were interesting.
She was a very good piano teacher. And she had been a member of the New York City Opera. So she had connections in New York. That’s how we were able to … she was able to convince Mary Martin after a matinee to meet with a bunch of piano students, and answer their questions. And I asked Mary Martin, ‘What does it take to make it like you did?’ And she said, ‘Don’t do it!’ She said, ‘Don’t do it! It’s too hard’ – basically saying to me, to have to ask the question, and you’re not gonna do it.
And so, Claire brought us to that. She brought us to, you know, lots of things. I don’t remember about all of them frankly … and maybe she had us always write something or do something to … as a thank you, you know. So that’s all I guess. I don’t remember that.
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Bernstein in person, probably, as I think back – I’m just imagining this – was just so spectacular because he was literally colored, live human being right next to me. Giant man, you know? And he seemed like the giant … I think he was giant. And so that … that was really different, you know. So I would imagine that would have really made an impression.
And what I loved – and what I love – about all great performers, not only in music, but in sports, is he was enormously passionate. And I could … you could feel that, you know? And so when you see somebody just loves what he’s doing, and says it loud, and he’s a big Jew, like, you know, like so many I knew, you know, and so… and he was, you know, so flourishing, you know, in his movements. And the fact that … I remember that the orchestra loved, you know, probably scared the shit … he probably scared the shit out of them, and he could be tough, but they were all just enamoured. And these were all the best musicians in the world, you know.
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Bernstein was part of that migration of musical Jews who came here after the war or before the war. I don’t know when his family was … but … or turn of the century, way back. And I think his Judaism played a big part of who he was, you know. It’s a very male dominant religion. And so the man is your chief, you know. Even though you pass your Judaism down through the woman, the man is the power in a family. It’s very male driven. And so I think that gave him a sense of power, you know,
If you watch some of Woody Allen’s early good movies, those will tell you about growing up Jewish in the ‘50s, you know. And that’s what I did: I grew up among Jews in the ‘50s. And so it was a pretty intense impact.
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You knew he was special. You knew … I think I knew growing up that Copland was his hero or his friend. And I loved Copland’s music even when I was young. So you knew there was something unusual about Bernstein. You know, a lot of things impacted my music. But I think he was different.
And when Westside Story came out … wow, you’re looking at something. Very different. All of a sudden, musicals weren’t cheerful. Musical drama: he invented musical drama, really. Westside Story, the first musical drama that I can remember – outside of opera, of course – you know – yeah, I found that that mostly must have been a huge impact on my life, yes.
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After our conversation, Gary was inspired to draw two more pictures of Bernstein. The first is a vibrant pastel portrait of Bernstein conducting. The maestro is notably older than in Gary’s childhood portrait, but his dynamism and magic are even more powerfully conveyed. The second picture is a line drawing in black and white – the same medium that Gary used as a child, but this most recent picture is more intimate: it shows a contemplative, aged Bernstein.
Aside from being powerful depictions, I thought these pictures really captured the essence of my project. They are a testament to the way in which Bernstein has inspired – and still inspires – creativity in his fans’ lives, even with the passing of time. Plus my trips to the post office to retrieve the parcels after they’d been through customs felt reminiscent of times past. Not an amazon parcel pitched onto the doorstep in sight here: just a personalized package, complete with hand-written note. Thank you Gary!