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Our World – Leonard Bernstein at Tulsa’s Woody Guthrie Center

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Son Logan and Brother Bob from an earlier visit to the Guthrie Center

This past Saturday Heather and I ventured to the Woody Guthrie Center in the Arts District to see their exhibit Leonard Bernstein at 100 co-hosted with the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art.

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It is hard to believe that he has been dead for almost thirty years. He was certainly bigger than life while he was working. An acclaimed conductor and pianist and composer of West Side Story and many other works of classical and popular music.

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The center has a lot of items such as his piano and personal effects even a broken baton.

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He was also an educator. For years, he gave talks on television about classical music. I’ve seen some excerpts before and he was a great communicator, able to talk about complex subjects in an understandable way.

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This is some clothing of his from the 1980’s. I was living near Houston, Texas at the time and had season tickets to the Houston Grand Opera and attended the premiere of Bernstein’s Opera, “A Quiet Place” in June 1983. Of course everybody gave the performance a standing ovation and Bernstein appeared on stage wearing an outfit like that above holding his hands together and pumping them up and down and people were yelling “Bernie” like they knew him or something. Or so I have been telling people that story. And now I read that people called him Lenny!! So don’t listen to anything I say. Not that you were, but don’t be mean about it. The link above goes to a New York Times article on the premiere. They hated it. Anything the yokels like in Houston has to be terrible, right?

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They also have a few of Bernstein’s many Emmy (above) and Grammy (below) awards. They also have several videos to view and lots of music to listen to if you wish.

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The guy was amazing and left a huge legacy behind. The Sherwin Miller Museum also has an exhibit at their location that reportedly more emphasizes Bernstein’s Jewish heritage. Checking out that exhibit is on my near term to do list.

Check out Leonard Bernstein at 100 for information all things Bernstein.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday