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Leon Botstein (born December 14, 1946, in Zürich, Switzerland) is a Swiss-born American conducting, educator, historical musicologist, (2025). 9781578067626, University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781578067626 and scholar serving as the President of Bard College since 1975. Profile: Leon Botstein, Hadassah Magazine, "Botstein is a proud secular Jew not ambivalent or defensive about his identity. In I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl (Jewish Lights), he writes: "In Judaism, learning is prayer, for it celebrates the human capacity for language and thought." He waxes nostalgic for the days of "exceptional Jewry," arguing that "Jews have entered the indistinguishable middle class…. We are no longer the people of the book; we are a people of ordinary vulgarity. The real tragedy of American Jewry—and Israel—is that we've used privilege to become absolutely ordinary.""
In 1963, at age 16, Botstein graduated from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1967 with a bachelor's degree in history. While an undergraduate, he was concertmaster and assistant conductor of the university orchestra and founded its chamber orchestra. His music teachers in college included composer Richard Wernick and the musicologists H. Colin Slim and Howard Mayer Brown. In 1967, after studying at Tanglewood, Botstein attended Harvard University, where he studied history under David Landes, writing on musical life of Vienna in the 19th and early 20th centuries, earning an MA in 1968. At Harvard, he was the assistant conductor of the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra and conductor of the Doctors' Orchestra of Boston.
In 1969, while a graduate student, Botstein was awarded a Sloan Foundation Fellowship and began work for New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay’s administration as special assistant to the president of the Board of Education of the City of New York. In 1970, at age 23, Botstein became the youngest college president in history after being appointed president of the now-defunct Franconia College in New Hampshire. He was offered the position after meeting his future father-in-law, Oliver Lundquist, who was on the board of trustees.
In the wake of the death of his second child, an 8-year-old daughter, Botstein decided to return to the musical career he had begun at University of Chicago. In 1985, he completed his Ph.D. in music history at Harvard and began retraining as a conductor with Harold Farberman, eventually leading the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra.
In 2003, following the success of the Bard Music Festival, Botstein developed Bard SummerScape, a festival of opera, theater, film, and music, where, since its founding, he has revived 13 rare operas in full staging. Later that year, Botstein became the music director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. His concerts with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra were broadcast in regular series across the U.S. and Europe, and he led the orchestra on several tours, including twice across the U.S. and to Leipzig to open the 2009 Bach Festival with a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah in Bach’s Thomaskirche. In 2011, he stepped down from that post and became the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra's Conductor Laureate and, as of 2022, also serves as its Principal Guest Conductor. In addition to his work with the ASO and JSO, Botstein has performed or recorded with, among many others, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, New York City Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, and NDR Symphony Orchestra. In 2005, his recording of Gavriil Popov’s First Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy Award.
by Luigi Nono at Carnegie Hall in 2018.]]Throughout this period, in collaboration with institutions abroad, Botstein helped launch liberal arts programs to countries in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East. He established programs with Al Quds University, Palestinian Campus Looks to East Bank (of Hudson), New York Times , February 14, 2009 American University of Central Asia, Scott Horton Interviews The Other Scott Horton , Antiwar Radio'' (Dec. 11, 2010) and Central European University, Bard College: About CEU and Budapest as well as helping found Bard College Berlin and Smolny College, Russia's first and foremost liberal arts institution.
Botstein also turned his attention to developing Bard's music program. In 2005, he oversaw the development of The Bard College Conservatory of Music and later became director of The Bard Conservatory Orchestra. During this period, he also helped Bard acquire the Longy School of Music, and led The Bard Conservatory Orchestra on tours of China, Eastern Europe, and Cuba. In addition to conducting for the Youth Orchestra of Caracas in Venezuela and on tour in Japan, Botstein also helped develop Take a Stand, a national music program in the U.S. based on principles of El Sistema. In 2015, he founded The Orchestra Now, a pre-professional orchestra and master’s degree program at Bard College; in addition to performing multiple concerts each season at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, The Orchestra Now performs a regular concert series at Bard's Fisher Center and takes part in Bard Music Festival concerts.
In 2016, Botstein received $150,000 as a donation to Bard College from the foundation Gratitude America, which was founded by financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. At the time, Botstein was on the charity's advisory board.
In 2018, Botstein was appointed artistic director of Campus Grafenegg in Austria, where he collaborated with Thomas Hampson and Dennis Russell Davies. On January 23, 2020, he was named chancellor of the Open Society University Network, of which Bard College and Central European University are founding members.
In 2019, Botstein appeared in the documentary College Behind Bars, a four-part television series about the Bard Prison Initiative, a degree program offered to inmates in New York prisons. The series was produced by his daughter, Sarah Botstein, who works for Ken Burns's documentary production company.
In addition, he is coeditor of Vienna: Jews and the City of Music, 1870-1938, published in 2004, and editor of The Complete Brahms: A Guide to the Musical Works of Johannes (1999).
Botstein's essays for The Bard Music Festival are published as a series in the Princeton University Press. He has been editor of The Musical Quarterly since 1993 and a frequent contributor to periodicals focusing on music and history.
Botstein also writes frequently on primary and secondary education and universities: in addition to the book Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture (1997), he is the author of numerous articles on education in the United States.
He is the husband of art historian Barbara Haskell. They have two children: Clara Haskell Botstein, director of legislation and governmental relations at the D.C. office of the deputy mayor for education, and Max Botstein.
Botstein and his first wife, Jill Lundquist, are the parents of Sarah Botstein, who produced the documentary College Behind Bars, and Abby Botstein (1973-1981).
| Honorary Doctor of Science, Watson School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory | 2018 |
| Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Goucher College | 2017 |
| Honorary Doctor of Music, | 2016 |
| Lifetime Achievement Award - YIVO Institute for Jewish Research | 2015 |
| The Deborah W. Meier Hero in Education Award - Fairtest | 2015 |
| Caroline P. and Charles W. Ireland Distinguished Visiting Scholar Prize - University of Alabama at Birmingham | 2014 |
| Jewish Cultural Achievement Award - The Foundation for Jewish Culture | 2013 |
| Kilenyi Medal of Honor - The Bruckner Society of America | 2013 |
| The University of Chicago Alumni Medal | 2012 |
| Leonard Bernstein Award for the Elevation of Music in Society | 2012 |
| Elected to the American Philosophical Society | 2010 |
| Carnegie Academic Leadership Award - The Carnegie Corporation, for outstanding leadership in curricular innovation, reform of K-12 education and promotion of strong links between their institution and their local community. | 2009 |
| Popov's Symphony No. 1 and Shostakovich's Theme and Variations with the London Symphony Orchestra - nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Orchestral Performance. | 2006 |
| Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters | 2003 |
| Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art | 2001 |
| Harvard Centennial Medal by the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to recipients of graduate degrees from the School for their "contributions to society". | 1996 |
| National Arts Club Gold Medal | 1995 |
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