LENOX, Mass. — Leonard Marcus, whose extraordinary musical career included celebrated roles as a conductor, radio host, magazine editor and educator, died on December 9, 2014, as a result of complications from an automobile accident the previous spring.



A longtime resident of Lenox, Mr. Marcus was 84 years old.



Leonard Marshall Marcus was born in New York City on August 2, 1930, the son of Murray Jack and Muriel Hannah (Simon) Marcus. As a boy he was given a violin by a favorite uncle. From that day forward, music permeated his life. In his teens, he was accepted by then known as the Tanglewood Music School in Lenox, where he initially studied violin. One day while running through the woods with his friends, he climbed a barbed wire fence and, unbeknownst to him, suffered a serious finger injury. One of his companions remarked, "Hey Lenny, your finger's hanging off." Unable to play the violin for the rest of the season due to the injury, he was offered the opportunity to study conducting with Leonard Bernstein, who remained a lifelong friend, and composition with Aaron Copland, Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston and Randall Thompson.

 

As a member of Hasty Pudding, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees in music from Harvard University, while continuing his studies in music during four summers at Tanglewood. His graduate degree from Harvard was deferred by one year due to his failure to turn in his thesis on the due date - instead, attending the Pogo for President demonstration in Cambridge.

 

An accomplished violinist, Mr. Marcus later served as music instructor and conductor of the Symphony of the University of Minnesota and was the assistant to the conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony, Antal Doráti.

 

A veteran of the Korean War, he went on to a varied career in the New York world of music and its recording -  including management positions at London Records, Columbia Records; editor of the Carnegie Hall Program; and program annotator for the American Symphony Orchestra. He was later named managing editor, and eventually editor-in-chief of High Fidelity and Musical America magazines.

 

Simultaneous to the latter, over several years, he traveled into the Eastern sector of Berlin where stood the Beethoven Library - continuing his in depth research of the composer. One year, his fourteen year old eldest son, who once accompanied him on the train trip, recalled his senses being heightened each and every hour they were awakened to be accounted for by armed military guards.

 

He was a contributing author to Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject of music recording and was an expert on the works of Ludwig van Beethoven.He co-hosted the syndicated radio program "Concert Stage" with the American soprano Phyllis Curtin.       

 

While a worldwide traveler, he was also a gifted teacher and taught music at the Henry Street Music School and the Metropolitan Music School, and at the Dalton School, in New York City.

 

He served as chairman of the Montreux (Switzerland) International Record Awards, founder and president of the International Record Critics Awards, and chairman of the Koussevitzky International Record Awards.

 

From his longtime home in Lenox, he co-founded the Stockbridge Chamber Orchestra (later renamed the Stockbridge Sinfonia) in 1975 and served as its conductor for nearly four decades.

 

In 1979 he was invited to serve as a member of the first U.S. cultural delegation to China, helping lead the way to diplomatic relations between the United States and China shortly thereafter.

 

For 25 years he was married to Beverle Reimann-Marcus of Sag Harbor, N.Y., with whom he bred champion Great Danes, cultivated what the Berkshire Eagle newspaper once identified as the northernmost peach tree in the United States, and raised three sons. Following their divorce, he met his long time partner Malcah Zeldis, a world renowned folk artist from Tribeca in New York.

 

Mr. Marcus made his home in Lenox and divided his time between New York City and the Berkshires. In May 2014, he was involved in a serious car accident en route from New York to Lenox. Following the accident, he continued to spend his remaining days in both locations, as a patient at Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan interspersed with brief stays in his Under Mountain Road home in Lenox.. He died in Manhattan listening to the work of his lifelong hero, Johann Sebastian Bach, on December 9.

 

He survived his firstborn son, Jason Marcus, who died of lung cancer in 1995. He is survived by two sons, Theodore Marcus, of Pittsfield, Mass., and Peter  Marcus of Los Angeles; and two grandsons, Eli and Charles.

 

Following an intimate gathering of family, friends and musicians who had performed during the service, he was buried in Lenox on a frosty, white Dec. 14 morning alongside of his eldest son.