Jamie Bernstein Reflects on ‘Exuberant’ Father

Marissa Stern - Jewish Exponent
June 27, 2018

When children grow up with famous parents, inquiring minds often want to know: What was it like to grow up with [insert celebrity here]?

Jamie Bernstein has been asked this question a fair amount about her famous composer father, Leonard Bernstein, so she decided to give it a “long and juicier answer” by writing a memoir.

She discussed her new book, Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein, at a talk at the Free Library on June 20 with The Philadelphia Inquirer’s classical music critic and culture writer Peter Dobrin.

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Jamie Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein Through His Daughter’s Eyes

By David Denby - The New Yorker
June 25, 2018 Issue

On the centenary of his birth, a memoir captures what it’s like being raised by a man with mythic successes and long-held secrets.

What happens if you are Cinderella and the prince turns out to be your father? Jamie Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein’s firstborn daughter, has written a memoir of her family, a family that her overwhelming dad—loving, inspired, and sometimes insufferable—dominated for decades. The author grew up wriggling inside a paradox, struggling to become a self when so much of her was defined by her brilliant parent. “Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein” (HarperCollins) is unique among classical-music memoirs for its physical intimacy, its humor and tenderness, its ambivalence toward an irrepressible family genius.

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Jamie Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein’s daughter reveals composer’s bathroom jokes

By Dalya Alberge - The Sunday Times
June 17, 2018

To the audiences who flocked to his concerts, Leonard Bernstein was one of the most brilliant composers and conductors of the 20th century, with West Side Story among his masterpieces.

To his eldest daughter, Jamie, he was “the man in the scratchy brown bathrobe who smelt of cigarettes” and loved to crack crude jokes about bodily functions.

Often Jamie would have preferred an ordinary dad. But in a memoir coinciding with the centenary of Bernstein’s 1918 birth to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants in Massachusetts, she recalls her father as “matinee-idol handsome, madly charismatic, a superstar”.

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Jamie Bernstein
Book Review: 'Famous Father Girl': Window into a Legend

By Erica Miner - Broadway World
June 13, 2018

Jamie Bernstein has described her newly minted book,Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein (Harper Collins, ISBN-13: 978-0062641359), as "a love letter to my whole family".

It is a love letter filled with candid, disarmingly frank memories: an insider's view of what it was like to grow up as the eldest daughter of the most influential American musician of the 20th century: Leonard Bernstein, or "LB," as Jamie came to call him in her young adult years.

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Jamie Bernstein
Jamie Bernstein writes ‘Famous Father Girl’ memoir

By Tracee M. Herbaugh | AP - The Washington Post
June 13, 2018

“Famous Father Girl: a Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein” (Harper), by Jamie Bernstein

Private schools, a New England country home and socializing with the likes of President John F. Kennedy and family — this is what it’s like to grow up as the child of famed composer and musician Leonard Bernstein.

The maestro’s eldest daughter, Jamie Bernstein, has written a new memoir about her experience coming of age with her arguably eccentric and wealthy parents. The book, “Famous Father Girl,” is a name Jamie was given by a private school classmate.

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Jamie Bernstein
Jamie Bernstein Part 2: Reminding the World Who Leonard Bernstein Was

By Erica Miner - Broadway World
June 12, 2018

Erica Miner: Traveling the US narrating your Bernstein Beat concerts, you encountered many musicians who have "a personal story to tell" about your father: "a moment when they'd had a meaningful exchange...that they never forgot." For me, working with him at Tanglewood and the Met Opera were life-changing experiences. Do you still get this kind of reaction and sentiment from musicians you meet now, or are we all getting too old?

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Jamie Bernstein
BWW Interview Part 1: Jamie Bernstein Celebrates Remarkable Centennial

By Erica Miner - Broadway World
June 10, 2018

Of the countless celebrations commemorating the 100th anniversary of this musical icon’s birth, perhaps none is more heartfelt than his oldest daughter Jamie’s newly minted memoir, Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein. I caught up with Jamie during her whirlwind book-related travels to discuss the birth of her book—and to reminisce a bit about old times.

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Jamie Bernstein
Ahead of Father's Day, Michael Chabon and Jamie Bernstein dive into the gaps between dads and their kids

By Bob Hoover - The Dallas Morning News
June 8, 2018

These new books, one by the daughter of a famous dad, the other by the well-regarded son of a little-known man, explore this abyss with a mix of regret and hope but always with love for their complicated male parent.

Jamie Bernstein, who turns 66 this year, is the oldest of three children of Leonard Bernstein, the larger-than-life figure of America's classical and Broadway musical world. It's the centennial of his birth, hence this memoir.

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Jamie Bernstein
Summer’s Five Best Celebrity Memoirs

By Julia Vitale - Vanity Fair
May 2018

Retta eats a cockroach, Leonard Bernstein’s daughter Jamie remembers her dad’s presence on President Nixon’s “enemies list,” David Lynch believes that artists should never get married, and more...

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Jamie Bernstein
9 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in June

By Sarah Stiefvater - PureWow

​​​​​​​Leonard Bernstein’s oldest daughter’s memoir is an intimate look at her father’s life and features a supporting cast including the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Lauren Bacall and more.

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Jamie Bernstein
Seven Books to Keep on Your Summer Reading Radar

By Erica Dreifus - Jewish Journal
May 24, 2018

In this centennial year of Leonard Bernstein’s birth — and a year in which Jewish American Heritage Month (May) has spotlighted Jewish contributions to American music — this memoir by the eminent composer/conductor’s eldest daughter is likely to hold wide appeal. (Consider reading it before Aug. 25, when Lenny would have celebrated his 100th birthday.)

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Jamie Bernstein
Photo Flash: National Museum of American Jewish History Holds 2018 Only in America Gala

By BWW News Desk - Broadway World
May 24, 2018

This past Tuesday evening, May 22, the National Museum of American Jewish History held the 2018 Only in America Gala at the Mandarin Oriental in New York City. This event celebrated the legacy of legendary Maestro and Broadway composer Leonard Bernstein during his centennial year, and honored his children Jamie BernsteinAlexander Bernstein, and Nina Bernstein Simmons.

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Jamie Bernstein
Celebrate 100 Years of Leonard Bernstein With These Festivals

By Shivani Vora - The New York Times
May 23, 2018

“The diversity of the events is incredible,” Jamie Bernstein said. “There are symposiums at universities, exhibits and film festivals. Opera and theater companies, ballet houses and orchestras are also participating.” She added that her and her siblings are traveling to as many of the celebrations as possible.

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Jamie Bernstein
Celebrating the Bernstein centennial with a family album

By Patrick Rucker - The Washington Post
May 21, 2018

Of the centenary tributes accorded Leonard Bernstein this year, few could be more personal than the one given by his daughter, Jamie Bernstein, along with soprano Amy Burton and pianists Michael Boriskin and John Musto at the Phillips Collection Sunday afternoon.

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Jamie Bernstein
Book Review: Leonard Bernstein's Daughter Writes Memoir Ahead Of His 100th Birthday

By Christopher Purdy - WOSU Public Radio
May 11, 2018

Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Chilean-born actress Felicia Montealegre, had three children: Jamie, Alexander and Nina. Montealegre died in 1978. Bernstein died in 1990, at the age of 72. 

Their daughter Jamie has penned a memoir, to be published June 12 in celebration of this year's Bernstein birthday centennial. Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein by Jamie Bernstein is, in its way, a love letter to both of her parents.

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Jamie Bernstein
Daughter honors Leonard Bernstein with the Houston Chamber Choir

By Lawrence Elizabeth Knox - Houston Chronicle
May 9, 2018

Throughout the evening, she will serve as commentator, offering personal reflections and remembrances of her iconic father, who died in 1990, and his rich legacy as a composer, conductor, author, pianist and music educator. In the past few months, she, like her brother and sister, has traveled to at least a dozen different cities, some multiple times, to take part in similar events.

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Jamie Bernstein
Review - ‘Late Night with Leonard Bernstein’ was a personal, emotional memorial

By  Fritz Klug - Revue Magazine
May 4, 2018

At most classical concerts, there are program notes with information about the works and composers to give background and insight into the music.

Late Night with Leonard Bernstein had nothing of the sort: the performance itself was those notes. Over the course of two hours, the great American composer’s daughter, Jamie Bernstein, took the Gilmore Keyboard Festival audience on a journey through her father’s life, influences, friends and “insomniac brain.”

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Jamie Bernstein
“Late Night with Leonard Bernstein” — a conversation with his daughter Jamie

By Jarrett Hoffman - ClevelandClassical.com
May 1, 2018

In a year when arts organizations across the globe have looked back on the life of Leonard Bernstein, it’s easy to lose sight of what his centennial might mean to one of his own children.

Jamie Bernstein will give a personal look at the maestro, composer, pianist, and father in “Late Night with Leonard Bernstein” this Sunday, May 6 at 2:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, as part of the Tri-C Classical Piano Series.

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Jamie Bernstein
Book Review - Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein

Publishers Weekly
April 23, 2018

Film documentarian Bernstein (Crescendo! The Power of Music), the oldest of three children of conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, presents an in-depth, intimate view of her father, juxtaposed with her own upbringing in his shadow. Her memories can be jarringly candid at times: she recalls the superstar conductor on the toilet while smoking, perusing a score, and promising to be with her as soon as he finishes “this movement.”

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Jamie Bernstein