11 minute read
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 play the 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.”
“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, was appointed as music director of the Saint Louis Symphony. He asked me to come here as his assistant. So, in 1968, even though I was eligible for the draft, we took a chance. I did not pass my physical. It was the only time in my life my blood pressure went sky high. And that was that. As assistant, my responsibilities were to be around for every rehearsal and to hold 83 young people’s concerts. That’s how many we had back then. It was amazing.”
Slatkin said it took time to really become part of the community. “People saw me at ball games all the time, taking the trash out, at the supermarket, and even going and visiting churches. I’m not a particularly religious person, but I thought it would be interesting for me to understand some of the roots and heritage of the population of the city. I found it all fascinating. From that point, we started various programs designed for different people in the community.”
“After about 10 years in a variety of secondary capacities -- assistant to the associate conductor, associate principal conductor, principal guest conductor, whatever -- I left to become a music director on my own, spending the next two years in New Orleans.”
“Then, I was asked to come back to St. Louis as the music director for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. I served at that post for 17 years. So altogether, my time in St. Louis was 27 years. I then went to Washington, D.C. to lead the National Symphony Orchestra for two Senate terms -- 12 years -- and then to Detroit for 10. I saw that things in the music industry were very different than they had been when I started. Of course, things change, but it had changed to a degree in terms of the responsibilities that one had as a music director, where you could make all the decisions. Now it was being delegated more to orchestra members who could make determinations about the future of the whole organization, artistic administrators, executives. It just became very different than what I was used to and what I preferred. I thought, ‘I’m going to step down from the administrative part and just focus on guest conducting.’” At that point, Slatkin was 73 years of age.
“I’m 77 now and I haven’t retired,” he says. “Some people think I have, but I haven’t. In fact, as we’re speaking, I’m about to embark on a nine-week guest conducting trip, mostly in Europe. We’ll see what happens. We don’t know yet about all the entry requirements because of COVID. In fact, one of the orchestras that I was to conduct in Moscow said, ‘We don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come right now. We’re only at 300 people in the audience and we need to cut your fee in half.’ That doesn’t bother me. I don’t do anything for the money anymore. But clearly they wanted to postpone until it would be a more hospitable situation, and that’s fine.”
“Now I enjoy taking lots of vacations. I build a lot of my guest dates around places in the world that I want to visit. Within my upcoming trip I’m able to, for the first time, take a week off at the Amalfi coast and spend a nice week in Bordeaux, which will be just fine. I’m happy.”
Slatkin says there are a couple of things that he wants on his tombstone. “I want to be known for working very hard as an advocate for the American composer. That is why I did not go to Europe to develop my career. I stayed here. That was important,” he explains. “One thing specific to St. Louis was not the symphony orchestra but the formation of the youth orchestra. That’s my proudest achievement, especially because they have done so well since the time when we started it. And then when I left, they became really important, vital, and they helped place instruments in children’s hands. They have distinguished themselves now for more than 50 years. And, of all the things I did here, in a way the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra was my child.”
Coming back to St. Louis from Detroit was not his first choice, however. “I didn’t want to stay in Detroit. It’s too cold in the winter and I didn’t have the kind of connection with the city or the people that I thought would be conducive for staying there. I thought about moving out to the West Coast because my son is there. He’s a composer for film and television. But, let’s see -- there’s earthquakes, fires, mudslides, high taxes, property rates...it’s just not for me. We thought maybe the southwest could be interesting, but we didn’t know anyone there.”
“Then, three years ago, I was guest conducting here. My wife, who didn’t know St. Louis particularly well, was out doing some shopping. I didn’t need the car so she was tooling around the city. She said, ‘You know, it’s really nice here. We should look at homes.’ And so she flew in here a couple times and found a place that was under construction. We were able to design the interior of the house and customize some of the exterior.”
“So the house itself was one attraction. I still know a good number of people here -- a couple of them very closely. That was nice. I’ve had two major heart procedures in my life, so medical care became important. St. Louis is a terrific city for that. Of course, people probably know that I’m a baseball fanatic. And another thing that was particularly attractive is that you can get pretty much anywhere you need to be in 10 or 15 minutes.”
“The downside for me is that we don’t yet have a true international flight to anywhere that I usually go. St. Louis used to have direct flights to London, Frankfurt, and Paris, but that disappeared a long time ago. My sources are telling me maybe something is in the works, which would be helpful because I spend 11 or 12 weeks in Europe a year, maybe a little more, and at least one good chunk, if not two, a year in Asia. I need to get back and forth easily. It’s better to do it if you don’t have to change planes either once or twice, but we’ll see. I do love it here. And one interesting thing is to see what has changed from when I was music director here, which was almost 25 years ago.”
“We had a block party here on our street. I don’t really know my neighbors, but here was a chance to say hello. They’re sometimes a little bit hesitant to come up and talk to me because they don’t know what I’m like. They don’t quite know how to approach me. I’m sort of just a normal guy. Once they know who I am, we’ll talk about the Cardinals or the crime statistics, whatever happens to be. You know, I would suggest If you see me around, come up and say ‘hi.’ It’s really okay.”
