Leonard Altman; Educator, Pianist Served on Arts Panels

Leonard Altman, a pianist, educator and arts administrator who led the unsuccessful effort to preserve the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York and was a member of the Committee to Save Carnegie Hall, has died in Santa Monica. He was 76.

A friend said Altmore took his own life after a 20-year battle with Parkinson’s disease that had left him virtually immobile.

After coming to California in 1979, Altman served as executive director of the Los Angeles County Music and Performing Arts Commission in 1980 and ‘81, and later was a member of the advisory panel in music and dance for the California Arts Council.

Since the late 1980s, he had served as the artistic director of the Maestro Foundation, an organization that presents private concerts in California homes.

Born in Boston and educated at Harvard University and New York University, Altman taught music at Brooklyn College, the New School for Social Research and Queens College, all in New York, and the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Mass.

In the 1960s, when a new Metropolitan Opera House was built at Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic moved from Carnegie Hall into Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, Altman was active in the campaigns to save the vacated buildings. Carnegie Hall was preserved, but the old Met was torn down in 1967.

From 1973-1979, Altman headed the music division of the New York State Council on the Arts.

Altman is survived by his longtime companion, Neal Sideman of Santa Monica, and a sister, Natalie Rosenblatt, of Louisville, Ky. The family requests that donations be sent to Los Angeles Youth Supportive Services, P.O. Box 46606, Los Angeles, CA 90046.