Sunday, April 30, 2006

More Meetings with Remarkable Men

When I was around 11 I went to a summer camp near Tanglewood. It was a "fine arts" camp, so we sometimes went on trips to see and hear performances. One concert we went to was some kind of new music concert at Tanglewood. I was pretty young at the time and had little frame of reference, so I can't remember what was on the program. I do remember that it was in the Theatre building, and I was sitting with my friend Donna Zeif, who lived in New York and was very worldly.

At intermission Donna got very excited and pointed across the Theater at two men who were standing up. She told me that the two men were Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland. We ran through the crowd, and she approached Leonard Bernstein and asked him for his autograph. (I knew it was Leonard Bernstein because she addressed him as "Mr. Bernstein," and I imagine she knew who he was from the Young People's Concerts in New York.) He held out his hand like a policeman stopping traffic and said "No, no, not tonight." I said something to him (I know not what), and he laughed. He might have even patted me on the head.

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1 comment:

Blogski said...

I was at the same concert at Tanglewood. My wife, who was extremely aggressive, managed to get both Bernstein's and Copeland's autograph on the Tanglewood Program.