Leonard Bernstein's World of Jazz

Omnibus - October 16, 1955

"Jazz is the ultimate common denominator of the American musical style."
–Leonard Bernstein

From his earliest days, the jazz vibe was in Bernstein's blood, pulsing through his musical veins. Picture this: a teenage Bernstein in the 30s, cool as can be, jamming out with his own jazz band, the life of the party with his slick jazz piano skills, and calling the shots in a swing band at a summer camp. He was cooking up jazz-tinged tunes back at Harvard in the mid-1930s, and later at Curtis, laying down tracks that would later echo in his future hits. The dude even wrote his undergrad thesis on how jazz is the heart and soul of American music composition - talk about a statement!

When he hit the bustling streets of New York after college, Bernstein was deep in the jazz scene. He was like a music detective, decoding and transcribing the wild improvisations of jazz legends like Coleman Hawkins. No surprise that Bernstein liked to hangout at Birdland.

Bernstein's compositions? They're like a jazz odyssey. Take his piece for clarinet and jazz ensemble, "Prelude, Fugue and Riffs" (1949) – a head-turner commissioned for Woody Herman's jazz band. In that same cool, jazzy year, he whipped up a movement of his "Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety" – a piece so jazzy it's got a solo jazz piano and percussion. His tunes, from the "Serenade after Plato's Symposium" to "Touches," got the jazz legends recording them. Jazz didn’t just touch Bernstein; it transformed him. And in turn, he gave back, elevating jazz in the world of classical music through his composing, performing, and teaching chops.

Flashback to October 16, 1955: Bernstein's on the second installment of the CBS-TV program "Omnibus," schooling the world in the "World of Jazz." This was before "West Side Story" rocked Broadway and before he took the helm at the New York Philharmonic. But for Bernstein, already a maestro multitasker, this was just another day at the office.