An internationally acclaimed conductor and a six-time Grammy winner, Las Vegas Philharmonic Artistic Consultant Leonard Slatkin is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

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-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

His parents were prestigious musicians in Hollywood, Frank Sinatra was a family friend, and he'd go on to become the music director of the St. Louis Symphony, the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, and the Detroit Symphony.

A 2003 recipient of the National Medal of Arts, he's now the Artistic Consultant at the Las Vegas Philharmonic.

Leonard Slatkin, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Nice to be here.

-You recently told Las Vegas Weekly that this position in Las Vegas is a bit of a full circle moment for you.

How so?

(Leonard Slatkin) We started coming here as a family back in the late 1940s, my brother and I.

Because my parents had worked very closely with Frank Sinatra, my father was always his concert master and my mother was always his first cellist.

In fact, my father conducted several of the albums that Sinatra sang on Capitol Records, although he didn't get credit.

He would invite us here, to his homes in Palm Springs, to LA.

My brother and I spent a lot of time here.

He was Uncle Frank to us.

And when we were little, my brother and I, he would take us by the hand and walk us upstairs, tuck us in, and sing us to sleep.

It's too bad we didn't have those microcassette recorders back then.

-What kind of impact do you think that had on you?

-A lot, because from an early age, I accepted the idea that music was all encompassing.

It wasn't just classical.

It wasn't popular.

It wasn't just jazz.

It wasn't just country.

It was everything.

If you liked it, you went to those different formats of music, different genres.

So I've always had a very eclectic range of tastes when it comes to music.

I really accept almost everything.

Don't like it all, but I listen to it all.

-What does it mean to accept everything?

-It means that anything that has creative spirit behind it is important.

Again, there are forms of music that a lot of people don't like.

Nobody goes and can like everything, but at least understanding why different kinds of music appeal to different groups, it's important because it helps us understand who people are, what is in their own community.

We can't be isolated, certainly not in the music world.

-Let's talk about your parents and their impact in the film industry.

Where do we start?

Dad played violin, which was your first instrument as, well.

-That's right.

My father was the first violinist, the concert master of the orchestra at 20th Century Fox.

So if you've seen any movies from about 1939 to 1953, if it's a violin solo, it's my father.

My mother was the first cellist at Warner's.

Same time frame.

Any cello solos from that time period, it's my mom, including later on, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.

My mother was Jaws.

Her brother was the pianist at Warner Brothers as well.

And that da-da-da, that little run on the piano, it's my uncle.

So I had this as one part of my life.

They were also half of the Hollywood String Quartet.

So we had the famous contemporary classical composers in our household all the time-- Stravinsky, Schoenberg, other names like that.

And then there was this popular end with Sinatra, George Shearing, Nat King Cole, Nancy Wilson.

So this really eclectic background, that formed me.

That made me who I am as a musician today, and I still continue to just love anybody who has that gift to be able to present music to others.

-How often do you listen to music that your parents played in?

And what is that like?

-I listen more now than I ever used to, because when I was a kid, you don't really know what it is your parents are truly doing, what their impact may have been.

Now I go back and I listen to many of their recordings and artists who were of their time.

I'm in some ways more invested in what music was like, because there was-- perhaps it's going to sound a little strange, but a little more heart and soul into what occurred a long time ago.

Today we have a bit of a cookie cutter set of generations in all kinds of music.

Albums get overproduced now.

We all know that.

And it's more about the visual impact of music rather than the oral one.

So my parents' time, we didn't have music videos, either classical or pop or anything.

And so it required you to listen and use your imagination.

You created the pictures of what the music might look like in your head.

Today, they're right there.

They're on the screen for everybody to see.

But imagination is key, especially when you're educating young people.

-What do you think about AI in music?

-We've always had some form of it.

Any form of recording is automatically AI, because you're manipulating sound.

You're generating it through mechanical means.

But in the music performance world, at least in the classical music one, there's probably going to be little impact.

An AI generated Beethoven symphony just isn't going to be the same thing.

People are always going to want to hear 100 people on the stage making music live.

But there could be supplemental material that makes the concert a more interactive experience for the audience.

And as we go through this time, as I mentioned, more visual experience, maybe we can find a way to integrate that into the listening and viewing experience.

-When you talked about not really knowing what your parents are doing when you are being raised, your mother was the first woman to hold a title position in the Hollywood studio system.

-That's correct.

-How big of a deal was that, and when did you become aware of that being important?

-Became aware when my mother told us about it, but I think it was actually after I started my career.

And a really good example of that is there was a very famous film composer, the guy wrote the scores to Psycho and The Day the Earth Stood Still.

His name was Bernard Herrmann.

Very fine composer and very good conductor, and he was on the Warner Brothers stage.

He was a misogynist.

He didn't like the idea that my mother, a woman, was sitting in a principal chair in the studios, and he said he was not going to continue if she was still there.

And she marched right into Jack Warner's studio at Warner Brothers and said, Look, if he doesn't want me there, I'm going because I don't want to work with him then.

And Jack Warner said, Eleanor, you're our first cellist.

If anybody's going to go, it's going to be Mr. Herrmann.

And he had to apologize to everybody.

So when she told me that story, I was probably about 22, 23.

It made me aware of always looking at any group that I see to make sure the representation of people is treated with respect.

Didn't matter color, race, gender.

It's never been an issue for me and for most musicians in the field.

It's one of the most equal playing fields we have in all the world.

-Can you think of a time when diversity has, has surprised you or opened your eyes to, Wow, I'm so glad I have this person in the orchestra; they provided this that perhaps wouldn't have been?

-Actually, that goes back to my years when I was in high school in LA.

So we're talking about the late 1950s.

Los Angeles has been immune from the racial discrimination, in particular, that troubled the world during those times.

And my high school, public high school, was a model for how I think high schools should be.

We had an incredibly diverse group of people.

But because of that, we never thought about it.

We were perfectly happy insulting each other on our own terms.

There was no recriminations for it.

And it was only one time when I took a young black woman to the Hollywood Bowl on a date.

And I knew the, the members of the orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

And we're walking.

And he saw white guy, black girl, and he spit on her.

And I didn't get it.

And that night, I was up with her till five in the morning, and she was explaining what the world was really like.

It was, I suppose, very eye opening, revealing.

But from that point on, I began to realize, hey, the world just isn't as pretty as I thought it was.

-Wow!

Talking about your influence in this industry, you recently turned 80.

-I did.

-And there was an event held in your honor in St. Louis at the Sheldon concert hall.

The executive director for the Chamber Music Society of St. Louis said, quote, We have amazing talent in St. Louis.

That's what we feel our responsibility is, to help coach those folks.

They do go on to significant music schools all over the country.

As far as Leonard tonight, he was the inspiration for that.

-Yeah.

One very cool thing about that event, the Sheldon is a small auditorium, incredible acoustics, very beautiful.

My father, who was from St. Louis, he played a recital there when he was 12 years old.

-Wow.

-Here I am on the same stage.

Well, my biggest passion probably has always been towards education, especially-- not here in Nevada so much, because you have actually really good arts education in your schools.

I was very surprised to read that and very pleased to read that.

A lot of the country is not like that.

When I moved to Detroit, I met with the director of the public school system there, and he bragged that 30% of Detroit public schools had music education.

I just looked up and said, That means 70% don't.

When I was a kid, every school had something.

The arts are so important, and I founded a youth orchestra in St. Louis when I first started there in '68.

There wasn't one before.

And I continue to go in every community to work with young people.

Not that people are going to go into music or the arts or broadcasting, whatever, but any of us who are in a position of being able to create something where nothing was there before, make it out of your imagination, that is more valuable perhaps any quality other than your own human beingness and your moralities and all those things.

But this idea of imagination and expression, it's just, it's nothing you can place a value on.

So for me, it's been about that and will continue to be that way.

-So then, what are your hopes for Las Vegas?

What kind of impact do you want to have here?

-Amazingly, the orchestra here is doing very well with its ticket sales.

And this season when I do to the weeks as a conductor, I'm looking forward to seeing full houses.

So whether you come in November or then again in March or to the other events they do, I think that base is pretty well in place.

So what we have to do is increase perhaps the number of concerts that we present, but we need to present them for broader spectrum of different audiences, young people, people who come from undervalued, underappreciated backgrounds, bring people into this creative world.

Yesterday at a meeting, as we're talking anyway, somebody talked about, Can the orchestra expand, say, out of the Smith Center?

Absolutely, and they should.

Go in, play in churches, play in schools.

Get the orchestra all over the city.

Make them as important a voice in Las Vegas as the traditional entertainers and make the traditional entertainers part of who the orchestra is as well.

So those are the things in my role as being a conductor and a consultant I'm hoping to achieve, a broader-based audience, a more outward group of musicians who really inform the community of what they do and, in general, making it not this elite institution people think we are.

We're really not.

We're just people.

We go out there on stage, and we play music for you.

-So would you consider that your primary responsibility as artistic consultant is to broaden the audience?

And how do you go about doing that as an artistic consultant?

-Well, you have to talk, as we have done now, to board members, people who haven't had this kind of approach in the past, looking towards other means to get the word of who you are out there.

But imagine if you pull in, you're driving from the airport to wherever you're staying, and all of a sudden there's a billboard.

And instead of such and such entertainer, there's Las Vegas Philharmonic.

Well, we didn't know that.

Or you go to the concierge at the hotel, and they say, We can't get you into the Cirque show tonight, but you know, Las Vegas Philharmonic is playing.

You might be interested in that.

All those kind of things, reaching into the community.

And with the growth in the city, with all the new businesses that are moving in, hotel expansion, you have exactly the marketplace you're looking for to try to reach these audiences.

Not only the ones that are here, the ones that are moving here and people who just come in here to Vegas to enjoy themselves, families that come.

It's a great time.

-Last question: We have about 30 seconds.

Six-time Grammy winner.

Is there a Grammy that you are particularly proud of?

-The first one, of course.

That first one is always the surprise you didn't expect.

I was in Europe when it happened and didn't know the Grammys were on.

I got a call, "You won a Grammy."

I said, "Were we nominated for one?"

I'd already been nominated a few times, but that first was cool.

And the ones you see on TV, they're large.

The original ones were nice and small, compact.

They were beautiful.

I wish they'd not gone to the larger ones.

Grammy people, don't stop that from giving me another Grammy.

I'll take seven.

-Leonard Slatkin, Las Vegas Philharmonic, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week in Person.

Great to be here.

Real pleasure.