Leonard Bernstein (center) with cast members of his Mass onstage at the Kennedy Center Opera House. The work was composed by Bernstein, with additional texts by Stephen Schwartz and Bernstein, for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971.
In Friday’s (5/2) New York Times, Nina Bernstein Simmons, Alexander Bernstein, and Jamie Bernstein write, “Our father, the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, liked to tell us about the time Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis called to ask him to be the first executive director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, which was being built as a memorial to her slain husband…. Our mother, Felicia, called Mrs. Onassis back to say that her husband was deeply humbled, but suggested it might be more appropriate for him to, perhaps, compose a piece to inaugurate the center. That was how ‘Mass’ came to be written. We were in the audience for the first performance on Sept. 8, 1971, when the work’s multifarious sounds and enormous, diverse cast filled the Kennedy Center Opera House … Our father’s music has had a special place at the Kennedy Center ever since. Since President Trump has asserted control over the center, making himself chairman and purging its board and administration in favor of his loyalists, a number of artists (though certainly not all) have severed ties with the institution in protest. Many friends and associates have urged us, the rights holders of our father’s music, to withdraw his works from a gala program on Saturday. We asked ourselves: What would our dad do?… He would let his music be heard. The Kennedy Center was created to gather and uplift all Americans, and all of America’s visitors. Our father felt exactly the same way about making music; he strove to embrace and unite humanity through the works he wrote and performed…. We have elected to keep Leonard Bernstein’s music ringing out at the Kennedy Center … We understand if artists feel the best way for them is to refuse to appear at the Kennedy Center. But we believe that we can make our own strong statement, in honor of our father, by letting people hear his music in that space … As our father once said: ‘It’s the artists of the world, the feelers and thinkers, who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.’ ”
