Leon Botstein

Botstein was born in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1946.^[6] The son of Charles and Anne, Polish-Jewish physicians who escaped Nazi persecution, Botstein moved to New York City at the age of two.^[7][8] He studied violin with Roman Totenberg and, during the summers, studied with faculty from the National Conservatory in Mexico City.^[6]

In 1963, at age 16, Botstein graduated from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1967 with a bachelor's degree in history. While an undergraduate, he was concertmaster and assistant conductor of the university orchestra and founded its chamber orchestra.^[9] His music teachers in college included composer Richard Wernick and the musicologists H. Colin Slim and Howard Mayer Brown. In 1967, after studying at Tanglewood, Botstein attended Harvard University, where he studied history under David Landes, writing on musical life of Vienna in the 19th and early 20th centuries, earning an MA in 1968. At Harvard, he was the assistant conductor of the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra and conductor of the Doctors' Orchestra of Boston.^[10]

In 1969, while a graduate student, Botstein was awarded a Sloan Foundation Fellowship and began work for New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay’s administration as special assistant to the president of the Board of Education of the City of New York.^[9][11] In 1970, at age 23, Botstein became one of the youngest college presidents in history after being appointed president of the now-defunct Franconia College in New Hampshire. He was offered the position after meeting his future father-in-law, Oliver Lundquist, who was on the board of trustees.^[4]

In 1975, Botstein left Franconia to become the president of Bard College, a position he still holds.^[10] He oversaw significant curricular changes,^[12][4] and, under his leadership, Bard saw record gains in enrollment, campus growth, endowment, institutional reach, and high-profile faculty.^[4][12][9] Botstein directed the launch of the Levy Economics Institute, a public-policy research center, as well as graduate programs in the fine arts, decorative arts, environmental policy, and curatorial studies; soon thereafter, he helped acquire Bard College at Simon's Rock and later founded Bard High School Early College, which operates in seven cities: Newark, New York City, Cleveland, Washington D.C., Baltimore, New Orleans, and Hudson.^[9][4]

In the wake of the death of his second child, an 8-year-old daughter, Botstein decided to return to the musical career he had begun at University of Chicago.^[10] In 1985, he completed his Ph.D. in music history at Harvard^[13] and began retraining as a conductor with Harold Farberman, eventually leading the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra.^[10][4]

In 1990, Botstein established the Bard Music Festival, whose success led to the development of the critically acclaimed^[14][15] Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, a multi-functional facility designed by Frank Gehry on the Bard campus. In 1992, in addition to being named editor of The Musical Quarterly, he was appointed director of the American Symphony Orchestra, a position he still holds.^[16] Under Botstein's directorship, the orchestra has developed a reputation for rescuing lesser-known works from obscurity.^[17] In 1999, Botstein helped establish the Bard Prison Initiative, which established college-in-prison programs across the country and is now active in nine states.^[17]

In 2003, following the success of the Bard Music Festival, Botstein developed Bard SummerScape, a festival of opera, theater, film, and music, where, since its founding, he has revived 13 rare operas in full staging.^[18] Later that year, Botstein became the music director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.^[19][20] His concerts with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra were broadcast in regular series across the U.S. and Europe, and he led the orchestra on several tours, including twice across the U.S. and to Leipzig to open the 2009 Bach Festival with a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah in Bach’s Thomaskirche. In 2011, he stepped down from that post and became the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra's Conductor Laureate and, as of 2022, also serves as its Principal Guest Conductor.^[20] In addition to his work with the ASO and JSO, Botstein has performed or recorded with, among many others, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, New York City Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, and NDR Symphony Orchestra. In 2005, his recording of Gavriil Popov’s First Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy Award.^[21]

Throughout this period, in collaboration with institutions abroad, Botstein helped launch liberal arts programs to countries in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East. He established programs with Al Quds University,^[22] American University of Central Asia,^[23] and Central European University,^[24] as well as helping found Bard College Berlin^[25] and Smolny College, Russia's first and foremost liberal arts institution.^[26][27]

Botstein also turned his attention to developing Bard's music program. In 2005, he oversaw the development of The Bard College Conservatory of Music and later became director of The Bard Conservatory Orchestra.^[17] During this period, he also helped Bard acquire the Longy School of Music, and led The Bard Conservatory Orchestra on tours of China, Eastern Europe, and Cuba. In addition to conducting for the Youth Orchestra of Caracas in Venezuela and on tour in Japan, Botstein also helped develop Take a Stand, a national music program in the U.S. based on principles of El Sistema.^[28][29] In 2015, he founded The Orchestra Now,^[30] a pre-professional orchestra and master’s degree program at Bard College; in addition to performing multiple concerts each season at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, The Orchestra Now performs a regular concert series at Bard's Fisher Center and takes part in Bard Music Festival concerts.^[30]

In 2018, Botstein was appointed artistic director of Campus Grafenegg in Austria, where he collaborated with Thomas Hampson and Dennis Russell Davies. On January 23, 2020, he was named chancellor of the Open Society University Network, of which Bard College and Central European University are founding members.^[31][32]

In 2019, Botstein appeared in the documentary College Behind Bars, a four-part television series about the Bard Prison Initiative, a degree program offered to inmates in New York prisons. The series was produced by his daughter, Sarah Botstein, who works for Ken Burns's documentary production company.^[33]

Botstein maintained a relationship with financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and reportedly visited his private island, Little Saint James.^[34][35] He was among the list of people named in the Epstein files.

Botstein's relationship with Epstein began in 2011, years after Epstein was publicly known to be a sex offender, after Epstein made an unsolicited $75,000 donation to Bard High School Early College. Botstein said he engaged with Epstein in his capacity as the institution's chief fundraiser.^[36]

In a 2013 email, Epstein told his assistant to have a woman be "appropriately dressed for Bottstein [sic]".^[35] That same year, Botstein also offered to meet Epstein at Bard High School, which is affiliated with Bard College.^[37] In several emails to Epstein, Botstein mentioned Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita.^[37]

In 2016, Botstein received $150,000 as a donation to Bard College from the foundation Gratitude America, which Epstein founded. At the time, Botstein was on the charity's advisory board.^[38][39] Botstein donated the money to Bard College as part of a $1 million gift he gave that year, with the rest of his donation coming from his personal savings and earnings.^[40] Epstein also put Botstein in contact with a daughter of Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn so that she could attend Bard College.^[41] In early 2017, according to The New York Times, Botstein and Epstein worked together to buy a $50,000 wristwatch.^[42] Botstein continued to correspond with Epstein until December 2018, less than a year before Epstein's death.^[35] Botstein has said he did not benefit personally from the relationship and that any money that exchanged hands was for Bard.^[43]

On February 19, 2026, the Board of Trustees of Bard College hired law firm WilmerHale to conduct an independent review of Botstein's connections to Epstein.^[44] A week later, Bard indefinitely postponed a planned March 2026 gala at Cipriani in Manhattan meant to celebrate Botstein's 50 years as president of Bard College.^[45]

Botstein said it would be up to the board of trustees whether he would remain president.^[46]

Botstein is renowned^[47][48][49] for reviving and promoting neglected repertoire and composers.^[50][51][52] In addition, as director of the American Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, he emerged as a significant proponent of "thematic programming", which assembles concert programs around common themes grounded in literature, music history, or art.^[53] He is also known for the series "Classics Declassified", in which he lectures, conducts, and takes questions from the audience.^[54] Both the Bard Music Festival and Bard SummerScape continue his method of reviving neglected works and synthesizing performance and scholarship. The Wall Street Journal's Barrymore Laurence Scherer wrote, "the Bard Music Festival…no longer needs an introduction. Under the provocative guidance of the conductor-scholar Leon Botstein, it has long been one of the most intellectually stimulating of all American summer festivals and frequently is one of the most musically satisfying. Each year, through discussions by major scholars and illustrative concerts often programmed to overflowing, Bard audiences have investigated the oeuvre of a major composer in the context of the society, politics, literature, art and music of his times."^[48]

Botstein's scholarship focuses on the intersection of music, culture, and politics since the early 19th century.^[10][9] He has written books including Judentum und Modernitaet and Von Beethoven zu Berg: Das Gedächtnis der Moderne (2013) and The History of Listening: How Music Creates Meaning (2000).

In addition, he is coeditor of Vienna: Jews and the City of Music, 1870-1938, published in 2004, and editor of The Complete Brahms: A Guide to the Musical Works of Johannes (1999).

Botstein's essays for The Bard Music Festival are published as a series in the Princeton University Press.^[55][56] He has been editor of The Musical Quarterly since 1993 and a frequent contributor to periodicals focusing on music and history.^[56]

Botstein also writes frequently on primary and secondary education and universities: in addition to the book Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture (1997), he is the author of numerous articles on education in the United States.^[57]

Botstein is the brother of biologist David Botstein and pediatric cardiologist Eva Griepp. Both of his parents were physicians who, after emigrating to the U.S., served on faculty of the Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

He is the husband of art historian Barbara Haskell. They have two children, including producer Sarah Botstein.^[58][59][4]

Botstein and his first wife, Jill Lundquist, are the parents of two children.^[4] Their second child, Abigail Lundquist Botstein, was fatally hit by a car in October 1981, shortly before her eighth birthday.^[60] She is buried in the Bard Cemetery.^[61]

• Botstein, Leon. The History of Listening: How Music Creates Meaning. New York, NY: Basic Books.
• Botstein, Leon (2013). Von Beethoven zu Berg: Das Gedächtnis der Moderne. Zsolnay.
• Botstein, Leon (2011). Freud und Wittgenstein Sprache und menschliche Natur. Vienna: Picus Verlag.
• Botstein, Leon (2004). Vienna: Jews and the City of Music. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1931493277.
• Botstein, Leon, ed. (1999). The Compleat Brahms: A Guide to the Musical Works of Johannes Brahms. New York, NY.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Botstein, Leon (1997). Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture. New York, NY: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-47555-1.
• Botstein, Leon (1991). Judentum und Modernität : Essays zur Rolle der Juden in der deutschen und österreichischen Kultur, 1848 bis 1938. Vienna: Böhlau. ISBN 3-205-05358-3.

• (2025) Gil Shaham, Leon Botstein, The Orchestra Now, Premieres: "Birds of America," "Nigunim," "Let Fly," Canary Classics.
• (2024) Exodus: Kaufmann • Rubin • Tal. The Orchestra Now. Avie Records.^[69]
• (2022) George Frederick Bristow and William Henry Fry. Classics of American Romanticism. The Orchestra Now, Bridge Records^[70]
• (2021) Arthur Honnegger, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and Othmar Schoeck. Buried Alive. The Orchestra Now, Bridge Records.
• (2020) Arthur Honegger, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and Othmar Schoeck. The Orchestra Now. Bridge.
• (2020) Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Frederic Chopin, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The Orchestra Now with Orion Weiss. Bridge.
• (2019) Arthur Bliss, Edmund Rubbra, and Arnold Bax. The Orchestra Now with Piers Lane. Hyperion.
• (2018) Ferdinand Ries. Piano Concertos No. 8 & 9. The Orchestra Now with Piers Lane. Hyperion.
• (2016) George Gershwin. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, Piano Concerto in F, Variations on "I Got Rhythm," Eight Preludes for Solo Piano. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Mark Bebbington. SOMM Recordings.
• (2015) Paul Hindemith. The Long Christmas Dinner. American Symphony Orchestra. Bridge Records.
• (2012) Luigi Dallapiccola. Volo Di Notte. American Symphony Orchestra.
• (2009) Bruno Walter. Symphony No. 1. NDR Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg. CPO
• (2008) Béla Bartók. Concerto for Orchestra, Four Orchestral Pieces, Hungarian Peasant Songs. London Philharmonic Orchestra. Telarc.
• (2008) John Foulds. A World Requiem. BBC Symphony Orchestra. Chandos.
• (2007) Paul Dukas. Ariane et Barbe-Bleue. BBC Symphony Orchestra. Telarc.
• (2005) Ernest Chausson. Le roi Arthus. BBC Symphony Orchestra. Telarc.
• (2004) Gavril Popov: Symphony No. 1, Op. 7, Dimitri Shostakovich: Theme & Variations, Op. 3. London Symphonic Orchestra. Terlarc. Nominated for a Grammy Award in Best Orchestral Performance.
• (2005) Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, George Perle, and Bernard Rands. Works by Copland, Sessions, Perle, and Rands. American Symphony Orchestra. New World Records.
• (2003) Richard Strauss. Die Ägyptische Helena. American Symphony Orchestra with Deborah Voigt. Telarc.
• (2003) Franz Liszt. Dante Symphony. London Symphony Orchestra. Telarc.
• (2000) Richard Strauss. Die Liebe der Danae. American Symphony Orchestra. Telarc.
• (1999) Karl Amadeus Hartmann. Symphonies No. 1 & No. 6. London Philharmonic Orchestra with Jard Van Nes. Telarc.
• (1998) Anton Bruckner. Symphony No. 5. (Schalk Edition). London Philharmonic Orchestra. Telarc.
• (1998) Ernst von Dohnányi. Symphony No. 1. London Philharmonic Orchestra. Telarc.
• (1995) Franz Schubert. Franz Schubert Orchestrated. American Symphony Orchestra. Telarc.
• (1993) Johannes Brahms. Serenade No. 1 In D. American Symphony Orchestra and Chelsea Chamber Ensemble. Vanguard.
• (1991) Joseph Joachim. Overture To Hamlet, Overture To Henry IV, Violin Concerto In D Minor In The Hungarian Manner. London Philharmonic Orchestra with Elmar Oliveira. IMP.