GROWING UP SLATKIN
Sometimes You Have to Leave St. Louis...Only to Come Back Written by Craig Kaminer / Photography by Cindy McTee While my music genre of choice is jazz, I recently had the opportunity to meet Leonard Slatkin and interview him about his life, his music, and how he ended up settling in St. Louis after living and conducting music around the world. I first addressed him as Maestro Slatkin, but he quickly corrected me and said he much preferred to be called Leonard. From the moment we met on Zoom, he was charming and delightful -- nothing like the unapproachable musical genius I imagined him to be. As a casual listener of classical music, I had constructed an archetype in my mind of someone with crazy uncombed hair, whirling arms, and a short temper who preferred to have his back to the audience. But Leonard wasn’t like that at all, or at least not to me. So I started at the beginning and while I thought he may try to avoid some of my more personal questions, he seemed delighted to talk about whatever I had on my mind. Leonard was born in Los Angeles to a musical, Jewish family who immigrated from the Ukraine area of Russia. His father, Felix Slatkin, was a violinist, conductor, and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet. His mother, Eleanor Aller, was the cellist with the quartet. “I’ve had one of the most interesting backgrounds in terms of heritage and occupations,” Slatkin states. “Most people would gather from my name that there’s some sort of Slavic heritage, and that’s true. We don’t know 100% what our name was when my grandparents were living in Russia, but we do know that when they arrived at Ellis Island at the end of the 19th century, the immigration officer asked them their name. They didn’t speak English and the officer didn’t speak Russian. They said ‘something’ and the officer wrote down Slatkin. When we asked our grandmother, ‘What was our name in Russia?’ she would say, ‘Our life didn’t begin until we moved to the United States. So we’re Slatkin.’ More than likely, it was Slotkin. My brother, Frederick, uses the spelling ZLOTKIN.” Leonard’s father’s family actually settled in St. Louis and his mother’s family settled in New York. His parents met in Los Angeles where both were working in the film industry. “My dad was the concertmaster at 20th Century Fox and my mom was the first cellist at Warner Bros. I was a Hollywood soundstage brat.” Pop music played an important part in their life too -- at Capitol Records and specifically with Frank Sinatra. Slatkin’s father would go on to become conductor at the Hollywood Bowl. He had a distinguished career as a record producer and eventually produced his own set of albums which he recorded for Liberty Records. He died in 1963 at the age of 47. Leonard was 19. His mother continued to 30 slmag.net
play cello but then left Los Angeles and went on to teach in Chicago. She eventually returned to Los Angeles and gave up the cello, but still coached and advised musicians until she died at the age of 78. “I had this incredible background filled with people from the world of popular music, from jazz, from films, and from classical music,” Slatkin says. “Of course, all of it influenced me. I had almost no choice other than to become a musician. I studied piano, violin, viola, and composition, but eventually felt that conducting was the thing that I was best suited to do. It sort of worked out,” he adds wryly. Of all of the Hollywood stories about the Slatkins, the most intriguing is their close relationship with Frank Sinatra. “In the 1940s, when Sinatra began recording and had moved to Los Angeles, my father was the concertmaster of pretty much every session Sinatra ever did,” Slatkin recalls. “My mother was the first cellist. In fact, Sinatra wouldn’t record unless my parents occupied those chairs. One time my father came to Sinatra and said, ‘Frank, I’ve got a really bad cold and I can’t hear. I don’t think I can do the session tonight.’ Sinatra paid the entire orchestra not to record that night because he said, ‘If Felix, can’t be here, I’m not going to record.’ That’s just how it was.” “Sinatra was always at the house. We went to his places in Los Angeles, Vegas, and Palm Springs. He was very kind to my brother and me. When we were very little, he would take us by the hand, take us upstairs, tuck us in, and sing us to sleep.” “We knew Sinatra was a big deal, but everybody was a big deal. You know, Stravinsky was at the house. Nat King Cole was at the house. The great film composers were there, but that was the life. They were kind of all equal to a kid.” Slatkin spent the first 19 years of his life in Los Angeles. “I usually don’t say that I grew up there because it was L.A. You can’t grow up in L.A. -- you have to get out of L.A. to grow up. So I left after high school and went to Indiana University for a few months. I was thrown out for not attending ROTC classes -- not for any political reasons -- I just didn’t want to go. They threw me out because you had to go. For a brief time, I left music altogether. I thought I would become an English teacher. Gradually, I came back to the music fold and was studying at Los Angeles City College when I became interested in conducting.” His music teacher arranged for him to have an opportunity to conduct. ““I felt this was okay, that I could do this,” he remembers. Slatkin then auditioned and was accepted into the music program at the Aspen Music School and The Juilliard School in New York. “In my third year at Aspen, the music director there, Walter Susskind,
