The Harvard Club of Long Island and Bryant Library will present a free virtual book talk Oct. 21 featuring Leonard J. Lehrman, a Roslyn native and one of Long Island’s most prolific composers.
The event, set for 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Zoom, will spotlight Lehrman’s new autobiography, “Continuator: The Autobiography of a Socially-Conscious, Cosmopolitan Composer.” Registration is available through the Bryant Library’s website.
Lehrman, Roslyn High School’s 1967 salutatorian, earned a B.A. in music from Harvard College in 1971, becoming one of the first students to submit a composition as a thesis there. Over his career, he has composed 272 works, including 12 operas, seven musicals, more than 300 songs, and 100 translations from 11 languages.
His latest book has been praised by colleagues as both “a symphonic memoir” and “a cultural archive,” blending history, music, and personal reflection. Harvard classmate Philip Aaberg described it as “a history of our time revealed in one man’s saga.”
Standing up for principle has been a hallmark of Lehrman’s career. His early musical “San Po Jo,” written during the Cuban Missile Crisis, criticized atomic testing and U.S. foreign policy. As president of the Long Island Composers Alliance in the 1990s, he successfully pushed to remove Philip Morris from program acknowledgments.
Lehrman studied for decades with composer Elie Siegmeister, who dubbed him “my continuator,” inspiring the book’s title. His work has been performed hundreds of times worldwide, including “E.G.: A Musical Portrait of Emma Goldman,” which had 49 productions in five countries.
At the talk, Lehrman will share stories of his Roslyn upbringing, his time at Harvard, and encounters with luminaries like Leonard Bernstein and Tom Lehrer. He will also play video clips from his YouTube archive, which includes more than 5,000 recordings with over 1 million views.
This will mark Lehrman’s 17th appearance at the Bryant Library and his first on Zoom.
For registration and more information, visit Bryant Library’s event page or leonardjlehrman.com.
