Leonard Slatkin - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father Felix Slatkin was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet, and his mother Eleanor Aller was cellist with the quartet. His brother Frederick, now a cellist, traced the family's original name as Zlotkin, and adopted that form of the family surname for himself professionally. Frederick Zlotkin has spoken of the family lineage as follows:

"The Zlotkin/Slatkin lineage is Russian-Jewish. The first Zlotkin arrival to the US was Felix's father, grandpa Chaim Peretz Zlotkin, who came to settle with relatives in St. Louis in 1904; he (or the clerk at Ellis Island) changed the name. He probably came from the town of Mogilev, from a shtetl (the Russians forced most Jews to live in villages outside of the major cities)...The Altschuler side of the family is really rife with musicians. Grisha's uncle, Modest Altschuler, was a cellist (making me 4th generation) and he had quite a career. Among other things, he did the St. Petersburg premiere of Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence Sextet. When he came to America he formed the Russian Symphony Orchestra (early 1900's)."

Slatkin studied at Indiana University and Los Angeles City College before attending the Juilliard School where he studied conducting under Jean Morel.