Leonard Bernstein

Born Louis Bernstein on August 25, 1918, he became the first American-born conductor to lead a major American symphony and claim international acclaim. As music director of the New York Philharmonic, he championed Gustav Mahler's resurrection and led orchestras across the globe, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard. His compositions crossed every boundary: three symphonies, Serenade, Chichester Psalms, the score for On the Waterfront, the musicals On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide, and Mass - and West Side Story, which has never stopped playing. He used television's reach to bring Young People's Concerts into millions of homes, worked for civil rights and nuclear disarmament, raised money for AIDS research, and conducted Mahler's Resurrection for Kennedy's death and Beethoven's Ninth in Berlin the day after the Wall fell. He died of a heart attack in New York in October 1990, at 72, ten months after Berlin.