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    Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein
    Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein
    Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein
    Audiobook10 hours

    Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein

    Written by Jamie Bernstein

    Narrated by Jamie Bernstein

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The intimate memoir of Leonard Bernstein and his family, that helped inspire the new movie Maestro

    The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir

    The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as the most protean musician in twentieth century America. 

    But to his eldest daughter, Jamie, he was above all the man in the scratchy brown bathrobe who smelled of cigarettes; the jokester and compulsive teacher who enthused about Beethoven and the Beatles; the insomniac whose 4 a.m. composing breaks involved spooning baby food out of the jar. He taught his daughter to love the world in all its beauty and complexity. In public and private, Lenny was larger than life.

    In Famous Father Girl, Bernstein mines the emotional depths of her childhood and invites us into her family’s private world. A fantastic set of characters populates the Bernsteins’ lives, including: the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Richard Avedon, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Betty (Lauren) Bacall.

    An intoxicating tale, Famous Father Girl is an intimate meditation on a complex and sometimes troubled man, the family he raised, and the music he composed that became the soundtrack to their entwined lives. Deeply moving and often hilarious, Bernstein’s beautifully written memoir is a great American story about one of the greatest Americans of the modern age.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJun 12, 2018
    ISBN9780062848413
    Author

    Jamie Bernstein

    Jamie Bernstein is a writer, broadcaster, and filmmaker. She travels the world as a concert narrator. Her documentary, Crescendo: The Power of Music, is available on Netflix. She lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for Famous Father Girl

    4.5/5

    37 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Greatly enjoyed this honest and intimate autobiography. It is written with sincerity, warmth, humor, brutal honesty and really draws you into the Bernstein household.
    • 5/5
      Really enjoyable insight into the real family life of this charismatic American legend, through family anecdotes, challenges, and triumphs. I loved it.
    • 5/5
      This book adds a whole other dimension to giant that was Leonard Bernstein. Besides the book being brutally honest, it’s also full of wit, warmth, and love. As you read through it, it is as if you’re being invited/dragged into the midst of the Bernstein family, with all the drama, fun, and pain. An incredible masterpiece! The audio version adds another layer of beauty.