Friday, May 23, 2025
For Leonard J. Lehrman, music is more than a passion — it’s the fabric of his life. An accomplished composer, conductor and pianist, Lehrman has spent decades championing the works of American composers, particularly those with progressive and humanitarian themes. He has completed unfinished compositions by Marc Blitzstein, conducted numerous operas, and written a substantial body of original music.
Yet amid his extensive career, he also serves as a reference librarian at the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Library.
Lehrman’s journey in music began early. He was born in Kansas when his father, Nathaniel, a doctor, was stationed there after World War II, and the family moved to Queens and then Roslyn, where he was raised. His family history traces back to Belarus in the 1880s, and relatives of his have made their marks in politics and academia, but it was his mother, Emily Rosenstein, a Russian immigrant, who played a pivotal role in shaping his intellectual and artistic interests.
“She came from Leningrad with no English, but she ended up speaking it better than anyone I know,” Lehrman, 75, recalled. “She was the junior division chief of Russian War Relief, raising millions for the fight against Hitler.”
By age 11, Leonard’s musical abilities had surpassed what his local piano teacher could offer. His mother sought out a mentor, and found Elie Siegmeister, a renowned American composer one of the founders of Hofstra University’s music department. Leonard quickly impressed Siegmeister, who initially hesitated to take on such a young student.
“I looked at all the scores on his mantelpiece and asked, ‘How long would it take to play through all your music?’” Lehrman said. “He told me a week, and I said, ‘Well, it would only take 45 minutes to play everything I’ve written. Do you want to hear it?’”
That moment launched a lifelong mentorship. Along the way, Siegmeister introduced Lehrman to the works of Marc Blitzstein, a composer who died in 1964 and who was known for politically charged compositions. Lehrman became dedicated to preserving Blitzstein’s unfinished works, completing 21 of hi compositions, including two operas: “Idiots First,” based on a Bernard Malamud story, and “Sacco and Vanzetti,” about the controversial trial and execution of two Italian anarchists in the 1920s.
“‘Sacco and Vanzetti’ was Blitzstein’s most ambitious work, and it took me 25 years to finish it,” Lehrman said. “When I completed it, we made sure to include their eventual exoneration, which Blitzstein never got to see.”
Despite some criticism for incorporating historical events that occurred after Blitzstein’s death, Lehrman remains steadfast in his approach. “The Blitzstein estate and I believed that if he had lived, he would have acknowledged (Sacco and Vanzetti’s) exoneration,” he said. “I’ve endured some flak for this, but also received a lot of credit.”
His commitment to musical storytelling extends beyond Blitzstein. Lehrman has composed 12 operas, many based on historical and literary figures, including Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Emma Goldman, and Rosa Luxemburg. His opera on Luxemburg. a well-known Marxist theorist, has been performed in both the United States and Germany, where it opened a festival in Lüneburg in 2019.
Lehrman’s artistic influences are vast. While studying at Harvard, he encountered Leonard Bernstein and Tom Lehrer, a singer-songwriter and satirist — two figures who left a profound mark on his work.
“People used to say I was a cross between Bernstein and Lehrer,” he said. “Bernstein was the soul of American music. When I told him I was finishing Blitzstein’s works, he took me in his arms and said, ‘God bless you.’ I felt like I had been anointed.”
Throughout his career, Lehrman has embraced musical diversity, setting poetry to music in 11 languages, including Russian and Romanian. His Romanian Song Cycle, which musically enhanced the poetry of Mihai Eminescu and Jewish poet Zygmund Tauberg, was choreographed and performed internationally.
In 2016 Lehrman recorded eight Russian songs with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, an experience that deepened his connection to his mother’s homeland. And one of his most remarkable moments came in 1996, when he met Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of the famed composer Richard Wagner, in Bayreuth, Germany.
“Richard Wagner was notoriously antisemitic, and I asked Wolfgang, ‘What can I do to show my friends in New York and Israel that antisemitism is no longer an issue here?’” Lehrman recounted. “He turned pale. Then, spontaneously, I suggested a concert of Yiddish music during the Wagner Festival, and he took a deep breath and said, ‘Why not?’”
While his career has taken him around the world, Lehrman remains dedicated to education and community engagement. As a librarian, he enjoys helping patrons find information, and as a musician, he continues to perform and conduct locally — and even helped the library acquire a piano, thanks to a donation by another area keyboard enthusiast named Billy Joel.
Most recently, Lehrman has been preparing for a concert honoring his former teacher, Robert Palmer, on June 15 at Court Street Music in Valley Stream, where he lives. The event will celebrate Palmer’s legacy and his impact on Lehrman’s own musical evolution.
For Lehrman, music has been a lifelong pursuit rooted in history, activism and a deep appreciation for the stories that shape society. Whether composing operas, reviving forgotten works or simply helping a library patron find the right book, his passion for knowledge and culture is evident.
“My goal has always been to make music meaningful,” he said. “Music should tell stories that matter, and that’s what I’ve dedicated my life to doing.”
