Leon Botstein (born December 14, 1946, in Zürich, Switzerland) is a Swiss-born American conductor, educator, historical musicologist,[1][2] and scholar serving as the President of Bard College.

[6] His music teachers in college included composer Richard Wernick and the musicologists H. Colin Slim and Howard Mayer Brown.

[7] He oversaw significant curricular changes,[9][4] and, under his leadership, Bard saw record gains in enrollment, campus growth, endowment, institutional reach, and high-profile faculty.

[4][9][6] Botstein directed the launch of the Levy Economics Institute, a public-policy research center, as well as graduate programs in the fine arts, decorative arts, environmental policy, and curatorial studies; soon thereafter, he helped acquire Bard College at Simon's Rock and later founded Bard High School Early College, which operates in seven cities: Newark, New York City, Cleveland, Washington D.C., Baltimore, New Orleans, and Hudson.

[6][4] In the wake of the death of his second child, an 8-year-old daughter, Botstein decided to return to the musical career he had begun at University of Chicago.

[7] In 1985, he completed his Ph.D. in music history at Harvard[10] and began retraining as a conductor with Harold Farberman, eventually leading the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra.

[17] Throughout this period, in collaboration with institutions abroad, Botstein helped launch liberal arts programs to countries in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

In addition to conducting for the Youth Orchestra of Caracas in Venezuela and on tour in Japan, Botstein also helped develop Take a Stand, a national music program in the U.S. based on principles of El Sistema.

[26] In 2016, Botstein received $150,000 as a donation to Bard College from the foundation Gratitude America, which was founded by financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to articles in The New York Times[27] and The Wall Street Journal.

[28][29] In 2018, Botstein was appointed artistic director of Campus Grafenegg in Austria, where he collaborated with Thomas Hampson and Dennis Russell Davies.

Under the provocative guidance of the conductor-scholar Leon Botstein, it has long been one of the most intellectually stimulating of all American summer festivals and frequently is one of the most musically satisfying.

[7][6] He has written books including Judentum und Modernitaet and Von Beethoven zu Berg: Das Gedächtnis der Moderne (2013) and The History of Listening: How Music Creates Meaning (2000).