Making Music

TED AND LESLEY ROSENTHAL USE MUSIC AND ITS VARIED PLATFORMS AS A BRIDGE IN SOCIETY

By Elise Linscott

Photos By Gregory Cherin

What the world needs now is love, sweet love—and music, according to Ted and Lesley Rosenthal. 

Ted and Lesley Rosenthal practice in their home in Otis.

The Rosenthals have made careers out of playing and advocating for music, and they believe that now more than ever, music can help bridge divides and communicate perspectives. Ted is an award-winning pianist, and his trio tours across the country, internationally, and right here in the Berkshires. Lesley serves as chief operating officer and corporate secretary at Juilliard School and was previously the executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She is also an accomplished humanitarian and violinist, and the two often play music together. 

The Rosenthals, who have a second home in Otis, split their time variably between Manhattan and the Berkshires. In June, they spent a week in Poland at the World Just Forum, a conference which Lesley helped organize and where Ted performed during a jazz coffeehouse, collaborating both with local Polish jazz artists and with conference attendees. The day before this interview, Ted was performing at the Yellow Barn in Putney, Vermont, kicking off the venue’s Young Artists Program. 

In September, Ted will be the keynote speaker and performer for a piano conference in Kuala Lumpur, as well as playing in different points across the U.S., including a standing Wednesday gig at the Birdland jazz club in New York City. (For those of you who might be venturing to the city, it’s definitely worth dropping in.) 

Ted performed in a sold-out concert at Tanglewood’s Linde Center last September, which led to his Seiji Ozawa Hall concert this July. Ted also has been giving annual workshops through the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) for the students to learn a little bit more about jazz and to help expose them to elements of jazz like improvisation, since most of them are classically trained. Coming up on Tuesday, August 12, the Ted Rosenthal Trio will perform from 7 to 9 p.m. at the West Street Theater at BUTI, 45 West Street in Lenox. 

Ted continues to produce new music with the Ted Rosenthal Trio, too. In June, they released a new album, The Ted Rosenthal Songbook, which is available on streaming platforms and as a CD. Another album was released in March, and two more will emerge this October and in January 2026. 

On Saturday, August 23, Lesley will moderate a Tanglewood Learning Institute Spotlight Series at the Linde Center with violinist, speaker, and author Vijay Gupta and Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez. They will discuss music and the arts in service to others. This fall, Lesley will be teaching a new course at Juilliard‘s Extension Division, called, “Arts and the Rule of Law.” 

Even with everything happening on multiple points on the map, the Berkshires is never far from their minds and hearts. It’s a special place in many ways. “There's beauty and relative calm here compared to city life,” Ted says, “and so it's actually a great pleasure to make music here, whether performing or playing at home or composing in these environments, because it's just so connected to nature and peace and quiet.” 

Both spent time in the Berkshires in their younger days, and in recent years they found themselves often visiting friends in the area. Four years ago, they decided to buy a home overlooking a pond surrounded by protected land. It has became their go-to place in-between conferences, music tours, and their primary residence in New York. 

“We were really drawn by the natural beauty and the cultural scene,” Lesley says. “Eventually, we just wanted to be a part of it in a deeper way. And between Jacob's Pillow and Tanglewood, there’s also a very distinguished history of jazz here, which we were interested to learn more about and then to try to do more to revive and promote into the future. It's a place of real cultural ferment.” 

The Berkshires is a natural fit for performing and teaching music. Audience members are largely educated and have an appreciation for music and culture, says Ted. “I personally love it because the kind of jazz I play seems to appeal to just the crowd that likes to go to Tanglewood concerts. I think there's a real hunger for more jazz, and I've been pursuing that with some success.” 

One of their proudest accomplishments to date was writing the jazz opera Dear Erich, which was commissioned by the New York City Opera and took two years to complete. Ted wrote the music, and Lesley helped write the lyrics. Premiering at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City in January 2019, the opera is based on a box of letters Ted found that were written between his father in Chicago (he was thrown out of university in Germany for being Jewish) and his father’s family, who were trapped in Germany during the Holocaust. 

“The revelations of learning about my grandmother and hearing her voice in these letters and my other family members in that whole period of time, and the relationships between them and my father, inspired me to create a big work of art,” says Ted. 

A number of other Dear Erich performances followed, including a concert at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington in August 2022. The most recent was this past March at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts on Long Island’s North Shore, and there are ongoing discussions about future shows. An educational version of the opera now is being developed to help students engage with these themes through music and interdisciplinary approaches. 

Lesley says she can’t help but notice the contemporary relevance of the themes explored in Dear Erich. And she hopes the opera—and music in general—can be one way to reach people who might not otherwise want to listen to alternate perspectives. 

“We're really living with the question every day of how the arts and artists can help to bridge gaps and bring people together and promote common understanding, promote empathy, and try to heal some of these really egregious divides that have formed in our society,” Lesley says during an interview in their Otis home. “Music really is a bridge. We’re able to communicate through the more indirect language of music in ways that would come across as maybe preachy or confrontational or send people back into their own bubbles without it.” 

Growing up, Lesley was torn between pursuing violin or law. But at around age 16, “I asked my first teacher, ‘What should I do? I want to be a lawyer but I also want to be a violinist,’ and he said, ‘You can always be a lawyer and play the violin on the side, but you can't do it the other way around.’” 

She took that advice, and more. She has been described as a transformative leader in arts and nonprofit management, with a distinguished career at the intersection of law, governance, education, and cultural diplomacy. The Harvard Law School graduate has authored several articles and a bestselling book, Good Counsel: Meeting the Legal Needs of Nonprofits (Wiley, 2012). Her paintings, photography, and essays on culture, law, and civic purpose have appeared in exhibitions and publications in the U.S., Europe, and online. 

She recently received the Maria Callas International Award in Verona, Italy. The citation reads, “As a leading figure in American cultural management, Ms. Rosenthal has played a vital role in advancing the performing arts through her vision and leadership.” Her humanitarian work also has been widely recognized. In 2021, as president of the Friends of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, she co-led airlifting a school of Afghan musicians—including 273 students, faculty and staff—and brought them to safety in Portugal, after their lives were threatened by the Taliban. 

Ted was raised in Great Neck, Long Island, and knew from a young age that he wanted to pursue music in some form—he’s always had “a singular mind about it,” he says. He experimented with classical and rock, but jazz turned out to be the right fit. Ted attended the Manhattan School of Music, where he received bachelor's and master's degrees in music. 

His music has spanned various art forms. One career highlight was being commissioned by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Matthew Rushing, who was then interim artistic director, to compose music inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and the jazz age of the 1920s for a piece called Uptown for the company’s 2009/2010 season, which has been performed around the country. In August, the company will be returning to Jacob’s Pillow for the first time in about six decades. (See page 22.) Although Uptown is not on the program Ted and Lesley said they’re excited about the company’s return to the historic Berkshires venue. 

“To watch the incredible Ailey dancers leap around to some music that I wrote was astonishing every time I watched it,” he says. 

The pair met at a party hosted by one of Ted’s former students who had attended Harvard with Lesley and was also a jazz pianist. Ted and Lesley ended up playing music together that night, and their courtship began from there. The two actually grew up ten minutes apart from each other in Long Island but never met as kids. 

I asked if they wouldn’t mind playing a tune for me during our talk. Ted sat down at the piano and Lesley picked up her violin, choosing Summertime by George Gershwin. “What key?” she asked him. “Same as last time?” As Ted began playing, his fingers effortlessly gliding across the piano keys. Lesley played the violin with her whole body, swaying to the music. The chemistry between them was vibrant and palpable. It was clear both of them played from their hearts, with the ease that comes from playing an instrument for decades, individually and as a couple. 

Looking out the sliding glass doors, past the various performance posters on the wall—including one from a 2015 performance by the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, which she co-founded and performs regularly as a violinist and violist—there was a sense of groundedness and tranquility about them and their Berkshire home. 

“I feel like we've landed in this really magical place,” says Lesley, “where we're able to be in a musical community that holds dear to the values that we care about: education and culture and community.”

To learn more about Dear Erich, visit dearerich.com.

For updates on where Ted is performing, go to tedrosenthal.com.

To follow the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, go to chambersymphony.com.

For information on performances and talks at Tanglewood, 

visit bso.org/tanglewood.