Leon Botstein
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Leon Botstein (born 1946 in Switzerland) is an American conductor and the President of Bard College (since 1975). Botstein currently serves as the music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
In 2006, Botstein's recording of Popov's Symphony No. 1 and Shostakovich's Theme and Variations with the London Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Orchestral Performance.
Botstein is a leading advocate of progressive education. Having graduated at age 16 from the High School of Music and Art in New York, and earning a bachelor's degree from University of Chicago, he became the youngest college president in the history of the country at age 23, serving from 1970 to 1975 at the now-defunct Franconia College.
He is generally credited with elevating the academic and cultural reputation of Bard College to its current standing. In 1979, he oversaw Bard's acquisition of what is now known as Simon's Rock College of Bard, the oldest and most highly regarded early college entrance program in the country. Along with administrators from Simon's Rock, he was instrumental in the founding of New York City's Bard High School Early College in 2001. Botstein is also Bard's Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities.
Botstein's written work includes Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, in which he argues that high school-level education after the tenth grade should be abolished in favor of a national early college system, as well as several other books in the fields of musicology and education.
Botstein is the brother of biologist David Botstein and husband of art historian Barbara Haskell.
[edit] Literary works
- "Judentum und Modernität" (Vienna, 1991)
- "Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture" (New York, 1977, ISBN 0-385-47555-1)
- "The Compleat Brahms" (New York, 1999), editor
- "The Musical Quarterly", editor
- "quasi una fantasia: Juden und die Musikstadt Wien" (Timms, Edward / Hanak, Werner / Botstein, Leon / Jüdisches Museum Wien ) (with 2 CDs; contributors: Karl Albrecht-Weinberger, Otto Biba, Philip V. Bohlman, Leon Botstein, Elisabeth Derow-Turnauer, Wolfgang Dosch, Albrecht Dümling, Tina Frühauf, Primavera Gruber, Michael Haas, Werner Hanak, Hartmut Krones, Elena Ostleitner, Michael Steinberg, & Sara Trampuz)
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