Leonard Slatkin

American conductor who has led the Minnesota Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic (1977-1979), the New Orleans Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony (since 1979), played at Carnegie and as a guest with the Dallas Symphony. Though unprepossessing in person, he soon emerged as the most promising new American-born conductor since Bernstein. On occasion he stars as a guest pianist. He became music director-designate of the National Symphony Orchestra in 1994.

Slatkin was the first of two sons of noted musician Felix Slatkin, concertmaster of the 20th Century Fox studio orchestra, and Eleanor Aller Slatkin, cellist in the Warner Brothers Orchestra. He grew up in a household where guests included celebrated composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Hollywood superstars such as Frank Sinatra.

Young Leonard began playing the violin at the age of three, started taking piano lessons at age 12, and studied viola at 14. He quit the violin, most likely because of competition feelings with his father.

As a teenager, Slatkin focused on composition, piano and viola, and by the time he was 14, was studying composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, a successful Hollywood film composer. By age 15, he was playing cocktail piano at a Los Angeles bar. He had his first opportunity to conduct at age 17 while playing viola in the California Youth Symphony. The conductor was called away to a telephone call at a rehearsal and he tossed the score at Slatkin, saying, "You look like you want to conduct: Conduct it."

In 1962, Slatkin left Los Angeles to study at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, known for its music faculty. But he wouldn’t take compulsory R.O.T.C. training based on pacifist convictions, cut his time there to one semester, and enrolled in Los Angeles City College in January 1963 intending to major in English.