Leonard Stein is a pianist's thinking-man. His dedication to music's long historical adventure has influenced students, scholars and audiences with a knowledge of the past and an illumination of the present. He has championed new music for more than sixty years in Los Angeles and abroad. His main influences were his piano teacher, Richard Buhlig, who gave the first performance in Berlin of Schoenberg's Op. 11 Piano Pieces, which he taught to Stein and, of course, Arnold Schoenberg himself, with whom Stein studied from 1935 until 1939 at USC and UCLA. Subsequently, Stein became Schoenberg's assistant at UCLA and helped him write texts on harmony, counterpoint and composition. In 1975 Stein was appointed founding director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC, a position he held until 1991. He edited STYLE AND IDEA SELECTED WRITINGS OF ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, published in 1975. Stein founded Piano Spheres with four other pianists in 1994 and remained its Artistic Director until his death, June 24, 20004.