Early Bird Books
January 17, 2024
Many of 2023's best movies were based on books.
A new year is upon us, which means we’re only a few months away from the Oscars. 2023 was a fascinating year for film, particularly the kinds that the Academy likes to reward: biopics, historical dramas, musicals, costume dramas, and stories that make you gasp with wonder at how the hell they ever pulled that off.
Read MoreClassicalMusic.com by BBC Music Magazine
January 16, 2024
Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Jamie Bernstein discuss how Bradley Cooper embodied the late great conductor Leonard Bernstein in appearance, movement and, of course, conducting...
Town & Country
January 6, 2024
Curious to learn more about Leonard Bernstein? Add these books to your TBR list.
A brand-new biographical film of Leonard Bernsteinn, Maestro, is now streaming on Netflix, but Bradley Cooper's film only offers a snippet of the life of the famed composer and conductor.
These 10 books about Leonard Bernstein—including Jamie's memoir, Famous Father Girl, which partly inspired Cooper in making Maestro—are key in understanding the man, "the human being," as Jamie writes, behind the fame. Here, what to read after Maestro:
Read MoreHarvey Brownstone Interviews
December 28, 2023
Today’s guest, Jamie Bernstein, is an author, narrator, director, broadcaster and filmmaker who also happens to be the daughter of one of the greatest legendary composers and conductors the world has ever known, Leonard Bernstein.
The Hollywood Reporter
December 24, 2023
Siblings Jamie, Alexander, and Nina Bernstein on conducting the Venice Film Festival audience, re-living their mother's death on screen, and why Bradley Cooper was the perfect embodiment of their conducting legend father: "He and our dad are so much alike."
Town & Country
By Jamie Bernstein
December 21, 2023
Leonard Bernstein's daughter, Jamie, reflects on their relationship, from the August 2008 issue of Town & Country.
When we were little and shared a room, my brother, Alexander, and I used to drift off to sleep at right angles to each other, listening to the steady waves of laughter, piano playing and singing emanating from our parents and all their witty, noisy friends downstairs. This is what grown-ups did: they drank and smoked and interrupted one another and played raucous word games and sang at the top of their lungs and laughed until they choked. We couldn’t wait to be grown-ups.
Read MoreTIME
By Jamie Bernstein
December 20, 2023
Five years ago, my dad would have turned 100. The Leonard Bernstein Centennial was a pretty big deal—but I didn’t really grasp the scope of my father’s impact until I started traveling around the country giving talks about my memoir, Famous Father Girl, which came out that same year. Everywhere I went, I met scores of older people who had been there: at Carnegie Hall, at Tanglewood, at the Kennedy Center, and beyond. They’d bought the records; they knew his Broadway shows. The Lenny fan base lives!
Houston City Book
December 13, 2023
A SPECIAL GUEST attended Houston-based chamber orchestra ROCO’s annual holiday fundraiser. Jamie Bernstein, the daughter of composer Leonard Bernstein, attended the festive evening, which coincided with the release of the talked-about movie Maestro, starring Bradley Cooper as Leonard. (Cooper just received a Golden Globe nom for the role.)
WNYC - All Of It
December 7, 2023
The new film "Maestro" is directed by Bradley Cooper, who stars as famed composer and New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein, alongside Carrie Mulligan as his wife Felicia. Their oldest daughter, Jamie Bernstein, host of the WQXR podcast, The NY Phil Story: Made in New York,, joins us to discuss watching her parent's love story come to life. "Maestro" is in select theaters now and will be on Netflix December 20.
Variety
December 5, 2023
The greatest film score of 2023 isn’t eligible for an Academy Award. That’s because Leonard Bernstein composed it between 1944 and 1977, multiple pieces that collectively form the musical backdrop of “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper’s film about the 20th century American composer-conductor.
ASU News
December 1, 2023
In ASU talk, Jamie Bernstein tells students to take their music out into the world
Smithsonian Magazine
November 22, 2023
The Bradley Cooper-led film is a dramatization of the storied composer and conductor’s complex love life
On her 25th birthday in February 1947, Felicia Montealegre sent a giddy letter to her new fiancé.
“Lenny, my darling, my darling!” she wrote. “I am a quarter of a century old, a very frightening fact!” Recent developments, she went on, included the arrival of a black cocker spaniel puppy (“She’s mine, my very own!”) and an impending driver’s license exam (“I drive alone all over the place, up hill and down dale, heavy traffic and all—and I’m great! So there!!”).
Read MoreFinancial Times
November 15, 2023
What do the following have in common — Judy Garland, Margaret Thatcher, Freddie Mercury and Stephen Hawking? Answer: they are just some of the real-life figures played by actors who have gone on to win Oscars. This is a well-trodden path to the red carpet of the Academy Awards.
One essential element is a subject with a high level of charisma, and nobody offered more of that than American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein.
Read MoreHollywood Reporter
November 14, 2023
Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre's children Nina Maria Felicia Bernstein, Jamie Bernstein and Alexander Bernstein sat down with 'Maestro' writer-director Bradley Cooper to discuss the upcoming film
Read MoreThe New Yorker
November 13, 2023
Jamie, Alexander, and Nina Bernstein compare notes on “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper’s film about their dad.
The three children of Leonard Bernstein uphold their father’s legacy with waggish exuberance. In September, at the Venice première of “Maestro,” a new film depicting Bernstein’s fraught but loving relationship with their mother, the actress Felicia Montealegre, they gleefully air-conducted along to the end credits, in the irrepressible manner of their father. While the actors’ strike sidelined Bradley Cooper—the film’s director, co-writer, and star—the Bernsteins subbed in as the film’s unofficial mascots. They like to call themselves “the three-headed monster.”
“A former boyfriend of mine coined it,” Jamie, the eldest, said. “Because of all the noise and the carrying on and jokes.” Jamie (blond bob, voice like an oboe) is the memoirist—in 2018, she published “Famous Father Girl”—and the mouthpiece (“I’m a yakker”).
Read MoreSunday Morning - CBS NEWS
November 12, 2023
This past Thursday, Nina Bernstein Simmons, Alexander Bernstein and Jamie Bernstein gathered at their family's Connecticut home to talk about "Maestro," the movie that Bradley Cooper has made about their late parents. Much of the movie was filmed in this house, where the children share cherished memories of their father, the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, and their mother, actress Felicia Montealegre.
Rocca asked, "How much time do you all spend in the house now?"
"Every chance we get," said Jamie. "Weekends and lots of summer-time. It's heaven here."
Read MorePeople
October 6, 2023
Leonard Bernstein's daughter Jamie and her siblings had a "surreal" experience seeing their family's life portrayed on the big screen.
At a press conference Tuesday attended by PEOPLE, Jamie, 71, reacted to seeing Maestro at its New York Film Festival premiere inside David Geffen Hall, where her late musician father conducted many times before.
Read MoreFar Out Magazine
October 4, 2023
The children of the famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein have admitted that they were blown away after first seeing Bradley Cooper play their father in the new movie Maestro, which Cooper also directed.
When they appeared at the American premiere of the film, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina discussed their impressions, with Jamie telling Variety, “It took our breath away; it made us gasp. In some pictures, we could tell a little bit that it was Bradley.”
Read MoreYahoo! Entertainment
October 3, 2023
“This whole project began a good 15 years ago,” explained Jamie Bernstein, daughter of famed composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, at the New York Film Festival’s Spotlight Gala Premiere of “Maestro” at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center. “The evolution of this film has been so intricate and profound, and so many things happened along the way, and so many new people arrived along the way — most significantly Bradley Cooper, who came into the picture about five or six years ago and changed everything.”
Read MoreVariety
October 2, 2023
Leonard Bernstein‘s children Jamie, Alexander and Nina were in complete awe the first time they saw Bradley Cooper as the renowned conductor and composer. “It took our breath away, it made us gasp,” Jamie Bernstein told Variety at the North American premiere of “Maestro” at the New York Film Festival. “In some pictures, we could tell a little bit that it was Bradley, but there were certain photographs where we would go, ‘Oh my God!’ It was so amazingly perfect.”
Read More