Leith Stevens

Leith Stevens (September 13, 1909 – July 23, 1970) was an American music composer and conductor of radio and film scores.

Born in Mount Moriah, Missouri, Stevens was a child prodigy pianist who was also an accompanist for operatic vocalist and early audio recording artist Madame Schumann-Heink.

During World War II Stevens worked as radio director for the Southwest Pacific Area for the U.S. Office of War Information. He was musical director of the War Production Board (WPB) series Three Thirds of a Nation presented on Wednesdays on the NBC Blue Network.

Stevens wrote the music, including a piano concerto in C minor, for the 1947 Hollywood film 'Night Song' where concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein played to the accompaniment of the New York Philharmonic conducted by Eugene Ormandy. The music is tonal, with a horizontal (as distinct from vertical) compositional approach, with sophisticated harmonies and challenging virtuoso passages for the piano. The work is influenced by Delius, Rachmaninov, and Gershwin, and is both impressionist and romantic. Stevens' piano concerto can currently be found on YouTube (2016).

The music accompanying the film The James Dean Story was composed and conducted by Leith Stevens. An eponymous album containing this music was released by Capitol Records in 1957, and its anonymous sleeve notes say, "Here is the music direct from the soundtrack of The James Dean Story, a different kind of motion picture. This is a film in which there are no actors, there is no fiction. It is, instead, the story of a young man in search of himself - a story of a lonely boy growing into a lonely manhood, of a quest for discovery and meaning, of a great talent and zest for creative expression, and of a tragic end which brought more questions than answers." The sleeve notes continue, "The life of James Dean is presented on the screen through the means of a new technique - dramatic exploration of a still photograph. Together with tape recordings, existing motion picture material, and the people with whom he lived and worked, these photographs create the presence of the living character. If there are supporting roles in this picture, the parts must be credited to the people of Fairmount, Indiana, where Dean lived as a boy; to the nine million faces of New York City, where he struggled for recognition as an artist and as an individual; and to the men and women of Hollywood who shared in the development of his career."

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