John Barnett

Early life and musical education

Barnett was born in 1917 in Manhattan, New York, to optician Guy Carlton Barnett and Bernadette Emma (Manley) Barnett. He began studying music at the age of five, when his mother taught him how to play the piano.

In 1927, when Barnett was ten years old, his family relocated to Englewood, New Jersey. Haworth Grammar School teacher Clifford Demarest of Tenafly, New Jersey, noticed his talent and placed him on trumpet in the school orchestra, where he received musical ensemble training. Barnett continued studying with Demarest through grammar and high school, playing solos in Demarest's Tenafly High School Orchestra and the Beethoven Orchestra of Tenafly, which Demarest had founded. Barnett later conducted Demarest's arrangement "Bach Doric Toccata" (1939) in January 1940.

By 1930 Barnett had received awards for his trumpet and piano playing, winning two silver medals in the Junior Division at the New Jersey State Musical Contest at Newark. He was a freshman at Englewood High School (Dwight Morrow High School), studying with a member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra who was preparing him to enter the orchestra when he reached the age of 21. Having played with the Heckscher Symphony Orchestra as cornetist, at the age of 13 he appeared as soloist in the 310th Infantry Band on August 12, 1931, at Winton J. White Stadium.

At the age of 15, he received a five-year scholarship for the period 1932–37 from the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York to learn orchestral conducting, advanced music theory, composition and piano. In 1932 he studied music at Columbia University summer school in New York City, with a four-week extension course in Boston, and entered Carnegie Hall's preparatory course to become a cornetist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He had been studying the cornet since the age of ten with Moscow-and-Berlin-trained, New York Philharmonic cornetist/trumpeter Max Schlossberg (1873–1936), who was considered to be "the Founder of the American School of Trumpet Playing in the Twentieth Century". Barnett studied composition and counterpoint with Reginald Mills Silby of New York and Princeton, New Jersey. From 1930 to 1936, he studied violin with Hugo Kortschak, piano with Janet Daniels Schenck (founder of the Manhattan School of Music), and trumpet with Max Schlossberg at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where he obtained a Master's degree.

Professional training

Barnett began his professional career in 1931, when he was accepted into the National Orchestral Association under conductor Léon Barzin, with whom he studied conducting for five years. In June 1936, accompanied by Barzin, Barnett sailed to Europe to study for a year in Paris, Romania, London and other European cities. Funded by a scholarship from the New York Philharmonic Society, the first of its kind, he studied with composer and conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, George Enescu, in Paris and at Enescu's estate in Romania. Barnett was the only conducting pupil that Enescu ever accepted.

Barnett studied at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg, Austria, with conductor Bruno Walter, Felix Weingartner and the Vienna Philharmonic. In Austria, he visited Linz and St. Florian, "the Bruckner cities", and attended the Bruckner Festival. He spent six months in Copenhagen and Prague, studying with Russian conductor Nikolai Malko, travelled with Malko through England, Denmark and Russia, and studied operatic conducting in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. Barnett spent a year studying conducting in Europe, returning to Paris in the summer of 1937 to resume his studies with Enescu, and returned to the United States later that year. a few months after his father died.

Early career

In 1937, Barnett was appointed assistant conductor to Leon Barzin of the National Orchestral Association, and conducted for the New York Federal Civic Orchestra (part of the WPA Federal Music Project) twice a week in Brooklyn and New York.

In 1939, at the age of 21, he was appointed conductor of the Stamford Symphony Orchestra in Connecticut, retaining his other conducting posts. At the time he was known as the "youngest professional symphony conductor in the United States." One of his performances involved an appearance at the 1939 New York World's Fair, where he conducted the Federal Knickerbocker Orchestra of New York at the WPA Building on May 28, 1939, part of which was broadcast over WNYC.

Barnett was awarded the position of Principal Conductor of the New York City Symphony Orchestra in 1939 after guest conducting a semester-long Beethoven Cycle at Columbia University. He assisted conductors Thomas Beecham, Fritz Reiner and Otto Klemperer in the New York City Symphony's Carnegie Hall series, taking over two of Klemperer's Carnegie Hall concerts at short notice.

The World War II years (1940s)

In 1941, Barnett was appointed conductor of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, a newly-formed, all-professional organization sponsored by the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, which made its debut on November 12, 1941. In 1942, he conducted the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, in the Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park, in the summer series. Before the war he was conductor of the New York City, Brooklyn and Stamford (CT) Symphony Orchestras. Barnett joined the United States Army as a chief warrant officer from 1942 to 1946, enlisting at Yaphank, New York, on February 27, 1942, and during the war he organized bands in military camps in the United States and overseas. In January 1945 he conducted a War Bond Concert at the Civic Music Center in New York City, which was broadcast by WQXR Radio. In March 1946, after his discharge from the Army, he was given the Oliver Ditson Award by Columbia University, which allowed him to resume his music career, and he was chosen by the university to conduct at Winston Churchill's honorary degree conferral.

Barnett and his wife relocated to Southern California, where they settled and had three children in the following decade. From the fall of 1946 to 1948 he served as associate conductor to Alfred Wallenstein, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and led the orchestra in nine appearances during the 1946–1947 and 1947–1948 seasons. He conducted the orchestra in two appearances on the coast-to-coast broadcasts of the "Symphonies for Youth" series.

During his years in California, Barnett served as associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, music director of the Hollywood Bowl and of the Pacific Coast Music Festival, conductor of the Phoenix and San Diego Symphony Orchestras, and for over ten years he also conducted the NBC Network's "Standard Hour" broadcasts of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The weekly live, one-hour broadcasts were sponsored by Standard Oil Company of California showcasing the talents of major orchestras on the West Coast, and broadcast wherever the company's products were sold.

After serving for two seasons with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, 30-year-old Barnett was appointed conductor of the newly formed Phoenix Symphony Orchestra. That position lasted only two seasons. He was dismissed by the Board of Directors on April 25, 1949, and returned to Los Angeles.

Middle career

On February 20, 1956, Barnett was named the conductor of the Guild Opera Company of Los Angeles, a position he was to hold for twenty-five years.

Later in 1956, Barnett and the 92-member Los Angeles Philharmonic began a 60-concert nine-week goodwill tour the free Far East under the sponsorship of the State Department and the American National Theater and Academy. Uncommon during the time, it was the first major orchestra in the Western United States chosen for an international cultural exchange program with the Orient. The orchestra was given a VIP-sendoff by Jack Benny, Jane Powell, Arthur Rubinstein, and Gregor Piatigorsky, and the orchestra flew to the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Okinawa, Korea, and finally back to Japan for an eleven-city tour. The orchestra's concerts would eventually be heard by over 250,000 people during the course of its tour. The orchestra's tour was the United States' response to Soviet propaganda being spread throughout Asia that the United States had no appreciation of culture and the fine arts, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic chosen to represent the refinement and good taste of American culture.

The tour included stops in Manila, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Taipei, Okinawa, Seoul, and 11 cities in Japan (Tokyo, Yokohama, Shizuoka, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kokura, Fukuoka, Kyoto, Otsu, Sapporo and Nagoya). The orchestra premiered its first concert on April 30 in the sweltering mid-90-degree heat and high humidity of Manila, where a crowd of more than 3,000 people attended, 2,500 of them sitting in squeaky rattan-bamboo chairs provided at the Mapua Memorial Hall, usually used as a sports arena, with many more listening from outside the venue.

A touching photograph of a Filipino child listening to the orchestra from behind barbed wire was taken by Leigh Wiener, a Los Angeles Times staff photographer who was assigned to send back a pictorial account of the orchestra's nine-week tour.

While in Manila, on May 3, the orchestra took a junket to the small island fortress of Corregidor (three days before the 14th anniversary of its surrender to Japan by the U.S.). They visited the still-visible scars of war and the small cemeteries interring the American defenders of the island who perished there.

The National Orchestral Association years (1958–1970)

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After 12 years as associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Barnett resigned to accept a position as music director of the National Orchestral Association in New York City. Barnett conducted his final two sold-out performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on April 16, 1958, at the California Theater in San Bernardino, a city which he had visited frequently during his years in Los Angeles, as he was a member of San Bernardino County's Valley College Community Education, where he directed the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra until 1958.

Barnett's earlier association with conductor Leon Barzin served him well. Acting as musical director of the National Orchestral Association from 1930 to 1958, Barzin was looking to retire. National Orchestral Association alumnus John Barnett was an obvious choice as his replacement.

Barnett was intimately familiar with the workings of the National Orchestral Association. He had played as a youth in the association's trumpet section and had benefited from its conductor-training program when he went abroad in 1936 to study conducting with some of the world's most famous conductors. Paul Affelder described the National Orchestral Association in his original liner notes circa 1968 from the Composers Recordings Inc. (CRI) LP of "Music of Wallingford Riegger" (conducted by John Barnett in 1967). Affelder stressed that the National Orchestral Association, in addition to being "a training school for young musicians," provided a bridge between music students graduating from conservatories and music schools and preparing to enter the real world of professional orchestral performance. Members went through grueling rehearsals with a professional conductor, were coached by distinguished professional symphonic players, and gave regular concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Their repertoire was vast as well, requiring the students to learn about 100 standard pieces of the symphonic repertoire each season, in addition to unknown and newly composed works. This enhanced the ability of the student musicians to quickly read, learn and perform complex works on sight. They were also given the opportunity to accompany great guest soloists from time to time. In a way, it was a "feeder" orchestra for the major symphony orchestras of the time, similar to minor league baseball teams serving as "feeder" teams for the major league teams. It was from this "training orchestra" that many professional conductors chose musicians for their orchestras, many of them going on to hold principal positions in major orchestras around the world.

Late career (1970–2013)

In 1972 he became an artistic consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a position he would hold for eight years.

From 1979 to 1985, Barnett served as music director of the Puerto Rico Symphony. During this time he also guest conducted at the Casals Festival and the Pro Arte Musical concerts in San Juan. While in Puerto Rico, he was quite active in opera, conducting stage productions featuring such great operatic artists as Renata Scotto, Plácido Domingo, Alfredo Kraus, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Birgit Nilsson. In symphonic-soloist concerts, he conducted the orchestra for famed soloists Claudio Arrau (Piano) Paul Badura-Skoda (piano), Rudolf Firkusny (piano), Ruggiero Ricci (violin), Yehudi Menuhin (violin), Hermann Baumann (French horn), James Galway (flute), Shlomo Mintz (violin), Itzhak Perlman (violin) and Ravi Shankar (Sitar).

Barnett was constantly on the go traveling to his conducting appearances. He guest-conducted the San Francisco Symphony, the Honolulu Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Fort Lauderdale Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony (of which he was the Founding Conductor), and the Eastern Music Festival. His conducting assignments took him all over the world, to such countries as Italy, Venezuela, New Zealand, Japan and throughout Asia. He also recorded for the record labels Capitol, Vanguard and CRI Records.

In keeping with the National Orchestral Association's teaching philosophy which influenced him greatly, Barnett's later years were dedicated towards nurturing promising musicians in higher education. He taught conducting and conducted student orchestral and operatic performances at Stanford University, Claremont Colleges's Summer Session, the College-Conservatory of the University of Cincinnati and at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he had been a faculty member since 1947. As the head of U.S.C.'s Symphony Conducting Department, he taught and conducted well into his eighties.

Private life and death

During World War II, on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1944, Barnett married South Carolinian Ruth Allen Gilland in the Army Chapel at Fort Rucker in Alabama

He married his second wife, professional dancer Marlyn Ann Balling ("Talma") in 1972 in Santa Barbara, California. They lived together in Westwood Hills, California, in the Hollywood Hills until his death.

Barnett died in Los Angeles, California, on December 6, 2013, at the age of 96.