American Impresario: William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Elements of American Character

by Lawrence Perelman

Overview

In 1994, William F. Buckley, Jr., the conservative icon, received a letter from an eighteen-year-old aspiring pianist by the name of Lawrence Perelman, the son of Soviet Jewish immigrants. Buckley’s response sparked a remarkable cross-generational friendship during which Perelman learned of the timeless elements of Buckley’s character, and the central role of classical music in Buckley’s American vision.

Lawrence Perelman, an eighteen-year-old aspiring pianist and son of Soviet Jewish immigrants, wrote a letter to William F. Buckley, Jr., the conservative icon, in 1994. A remarkable cross-generational friendship was sparked by Buckley’s response. During their friendship Perelman would go on to learn of the timeless elements of Buckley’s character and the central role of classical music in Buckley’s American vision.

In 2025, the 100th anniversary of Buckley’s birth, this book delves into some of Buckley’s virtues which Perelman witnessed firsthand and argues that those virtues can transform the fabric of America’s character. Their friendship spanned from 1995 to February 27, 2008, the day Buckley passed away in his Connecticut home while Perelman practiced piano in a nearby room for a private recital that evening for Buckley and friends that would never happen.

American Impresario is a portrait of Buckley, the impresario of the conservative movement, man of faith, Cold Warrior, bulwark against Anti-Semitism, Renaissance man, musician, and mentor to countless people who continue their work today. This book will inspire readers, both young and old, to emulate Buckley’s virtues, including a return to civil discourse, anonymous philanthropy, faith, patriotism and fostering relationships between mentor and protégé, as part of a goal to reweave the fabric of our nation’s character.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798888453803
Publisher:	Bombardier Books
Publication date:	02/25/2025
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Lawrence Perelman is founder & CEO of Semantix Creative Group, a strategic advisory firm specializing in business strategy, management and PR/Communications for a wide range of artists, institutions and companies in the performing arts. He has advised some of the greatest artists in the world, including conductor Gianandrea Noseda, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, pianist Martha Argerich, as well as the legendary Salzburg Festival for over two decades. He is also a co-founder & business strategy consultant at Carnegie Hall+, a performing arts streaming service. He is a native of St. Paul, Minnesota and studied to become a concert pianist. He attended Manhattan School of Music and graduated from Macalester College with a BA in Political Science and Music. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Editorial Reviews

American Impresario is a great read. I loved discovering the details of my friend Larry Perelman’s earlier days. A young Jewish family with their talented sons escaping communist Russia finding refuge in this great country America, not unlike my coming to America as a young refugee at the age of twelve. It is evident in your dedication of American Impresario to William F. Buckley, Jr., that not only do you appreciated him as a mentor and music lover, but that the conservative values that Buckley professed; his fight against communism, anti-Semitism and his concern about civility, respect, and equality in the American fiber were his concern. Sentiments and values that you value and still relate to today.

Lidia Bastianich

...Buckley’s trusting nature was an expression of his generosity, which is the theme of American Impresario, Lawrence Perelman’s sweet and guileless memoir of his fourteen-year friendship with Buckley.

Barton Swaim

[American Impresario] effectively reveals a personal side of the conservative thinker beyond his public persona. An intimate...exploration of Buckley’s legacy by a man who knew him.

Kirkus Reviews

The result [of American Impresario] is an eloquent, absorbing, and heartfelt book.

Jacob Heilbrunn

American Impresario is a love letter—to a great man, William F. Buckley, Jr., who became the author’s great friend, and to the great music, which provided so much of the stuff of their relationship. It is also a meditation on fealty—one of the virtues any of us, musical or not, can practice in this sad world.

Richard Brookhiser Richard Brookhiser

...[a] moving new tribute [and]...a testament, too, to Buckley’s lifelong evangelism for music, expressed on Firing Line, in his columns, and in the gatherings he organized for friends and colleagues. ‘Politics,’ Perelman recalls Buckley saying, ‘is my vocation, not my avocation.’

Katherine Howell

Larry Perelman has written an affecting memoir of his deep friendship with one of the great figures of the 20th Century, united by their love of the finest music ever composed and of the high points of our civilization.

Rich Lowry

...American Impresario is a wholesome memoir that gives us a glimpse at Buckley not as an icon of American politics, but as a man, a friend, and most of all, a fan of classical music.

Alec Dent

All who came into Bill Buckley’s orbit felt the magical pull of his friendship. In the last decade of Buckley’s life, the pianist Larry Perelman grew especially close to him. This warm memoir of their friendship—enriched with the themes of immigration and exile, apprenticeship and self-discovery—imparts fresh magic of its own. I read it with admiration and pleasure.

Sam Tanenhaus

2025-07-23
A trained concert pianist recalls his friendship with a luminary of American conservatism in this memoir.

“Impresarios are those who bring to fruition worlds that to others are illusory,” writes Perelman, who reflects on the legacy of William F. Buckley Jr. in this personal remembrance. They were an unlikely duo; Buckley was almost 70 and Perelman was a 19-year-old college student when the two first met in 1995, and they became friends after the conservative thinker and host of theFiring Line TV program responded to Perelman’s fan mail. Although they shared similar politics, their primary connection was their mutual love of classical music. It was an “extraordinary cross-generational and cross-religious friendship,” Perelman writes, that “blossomed at just the right moment for us both.” At the time, the author, who was the son of Jewish immigrants who’d fled the Soviet Union in the 1970s, was training as a concert pianist at the Manhattan School of Music. He recalls his awe upon first entering Buckley’s “magisterial” Manhattan home, and later, in 2008, being summoned to play Beethoven’sDiabelli Variations at the commentator’s Connecticut estate. Throughout, the author provides frequent vignettes that offer homages to Buckley’s intellectual legacy. Most important to Perelman, given his family background, are Buckley’s core positions opposing communism and antisemitism. Although anticommunism was a standard feature of post-World War II conservatism, the book convincingly notes that Buckley’s disgust with anti-Jewish discrimination often put him at odds with right-wing allies, including members of his own family. Perelman argues that Buckley’s ability to stand by his moral convictions, even if it meant speaking out against “his conservative coalition,” offers a necessary lesson for today. At times, though, the work is hagiographic to a fault; for instance, it glosses over Buckley’s infamous opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by simply stating that his “positions evolved over time.” That said, this volume effectively reveals a personal side of the conservative thinker beyond his public persona.

An intimate, if sometimes-idealized, exploration of Buckley’s legacy by a man who knew him.

Kirkus Reviews