New music in the United States since World War II has been a spirited arena of diverse ideologies. Serialism, minimalism, indeterminacy, “New Romanticism”, and other musical pathways have attracted their passionate constituencies of composers and audience. Of composers who have chosen to go their own way, working apart from the ever-changing mainstream, a major figure is Leon Kirchner. Single-mindedly following his own vision, he has developed a powerful inimitable language.

Kirchner was born in Brooklyn in 1919, the son of Russian Jews. At the age of nine his family moved to Los Angeles, which was in the 1930s to become a creative mecca with the influx of distinguished figures fleeing Nazi Europe. Family hopes for a medical career were dashed when Kirchner put his zoology major behind him and entered Arnold Schoenberg’s class at U.C.L.A. (University of California at Los Angeles). He received his Bachelor of Arts d