Leonard Burkat

Leonard Burkat was born in Boston, Massachusetts on July 20 or 21, 1919. As a boy, he attended the Boston Latin School and played saxophone and oboe. Later he took courses at Boston University, Harvard University, and the Columbia University School of Library Science. Burkat had several careers in music. He wrote music criticism for the Boston Globe and the Boston Evening Transcript . He worked as a music librarian at the Boston Public Library, and then, beginning in 1946, for the Berkshire Music Center and the Boston Symphony Orchestra; eventually he became the Orchestra's artistic administrator. In 1963, Burkat joined Columbia Records; by the time of his retirement in 1973, he was a vice-president. In his later years, he established the Leonard Burkat Program Note Service; he wrote program notes for thousands of works, and they were used by hundreds of prominent orchestras and soloists. Leonard Burkat died in Danbury, Connecticut on August 25, 1992.