Lloyd Schwartz
Lloyd Schwartz is the classical music critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
In addition to his role on Fresh Air, Schwartz is the Senior Editor of Classical Music for the web-journal New York Arts and Contributing Arts Critic for WBUR's the ARTery. He is the author of four volumes of poems: These People; Goodnight, Gracie; Cairo Traffic; and Little Kisses (University of Chicago Press, 2017). A selection of his Fresh Air reviews appears in the volume Music In—and On—the Air. He is the co-editor of the Library of the America's Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters and the editor of the centennial edition of Elizabeth Bishop's Prose, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2011.
In 1994, Schwartz was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.
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Many music lovers consider Ives, who died in 1954, to be the first truly great American composer. A new recording by pianist Donald Berman is a major addition to the Ives discography.
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The 28-year-old conductor has been making news lately — getting rave reviews for renditions of Stravinsky and Debussy, and also for being the music director of more than one major orchestra.
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Soundies were 3-minute musical films which you could watch at a bar or club on a large jukebox with a screen. Film historian Susan Delson has curated a selection in Soundies: The Ultimate Collection.
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In 2018, three years before his death, the pianist and composer gave a concert in Sardinia that included both Mozart and George Gershwin. A live recording of that concert is now available.
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Widely considered the greatest singing actor in opera history, Callas died in 1977 at the age of 53. Now, several new releases celebrate both her singing and her acting.
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Verdi imagined each of his operas painted with a different tincture. Conductor Riccardo Chailly puts together an exciting new album of Verdi's choruses, from his best known to his most obscure.
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Herrmann composed some of the best-known film music ever written — especially the scores he wrote for Alfred Hitchcock. Now a new CD shows another side of Herrmann that's equally memorable.
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A new installment of the PBS series American Experience centers on the legendary Black contralto, her extraordinary artistry and the important place she holds in the civil rights movement.
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Price, now 93, was the first African American soprano to have a major career at the Metropolitan Opera. Critics and fans agreed that she had one of the most beautiful singing voices they'd ever heard.
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Fitzgerald's warm, yet ultra-cool voice was at the opposite pole of jazz singing from Armstrong's gravelly growl. There's absolutely no reason their voices should blend so effortlessly — but they do.