Me

Though I've been known for many years as a critic, most of my work these days is composing or consulting, or teaching, or doing projects with orchestras.

You can read about many current projects under the "Elsewhere" heading, but one of the most important is my ongoing book on the future of classical music, which I'm unveiling in installments right here on ArtsJournal.

I'd guess that these days I'm best known as some kind of expert on the future of classical music. I find myself saying that this is like being an expert on extraterrestrial life; nobody knows anything for sure about either subject. But it's certainly true that I've made a study of everything (or at least everything I can think of) that relates to this subject, and that I've managed to put together some fairly solid data, which in itself is an achievement, because data -- solid facts and statistics -- is hard to come by, either not publicly available at all (though it may circulate privately), or else just not widely distributed. I've also got a wide network of contacts, from which I get a lot of information. One thing that's transparently clear: Honeycombed throughout the classical music business, are all kinds of people -- musicians, composers, orchestra managers, administrators, marketers, radio broadcasters, publicists, teachers, students, members of the audience, critics -- who think that classical music needs to change. It's amazing how many of these people there are. They aren't necessarily in touch with each other, and many of them may underestimate how many like-minded people there are. But their number, as far as I can see, is growing, and I'm expecting a tipping point in the not very distant future, when suddenly people with strong ideas for change find themselves in the majority

My background? I studied political science in college, then singing (I was a bass-baritone), then composition (in which I have a graduate degree). Then I had a composing career in the '70s and early '80s, mostly in opera. And then I gave it up, becoming a critic instead. I defected from classical music in 1986, and two years later became a pop music critic, writing first for the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and then serving as music critic and music editor of Entertainment Weekly. Then I got back into classical music, becoming especially known as a music critic for The Wall Street Journal. That led to my present consulting work and future-of-classical-music punditry.

Somewhere along the line I revived my composing career, which is still a work in progress (work I haven't taken nearly seriously enough, or spent enough time on).

And as for other things in my life…I'm very, very happily married to Anne Midgette, the extraordinary critic for The New York Times. We live partly in New York, and partly in Warwick, a peaceful town about an hour north and west of the city, where we've built a lovely house. For a while, in years past, I was involved in UFO research, and would call myself a believer who demands scientific proof. I like pop music just as much as classical music, and sometimes more; I really couldn't live without it. Certainly it's the artistic equal of classical music, though it functions very differently. (And you do understand that I'm talking about the best pop music. Taking Britney Spears as a model pop music person, then comparing her to Beethoven, and then proclaiming that classical music wins, is about as silly as putting a serious artist like Bruce Springsteen up against a delightful trifler like Massenet, and declaring pop music the winner. The part that's hard for the classical music world to understand, I think, is that someone like Springsteen can be thoroughly working-class, and yet thoroughly an artist, a possibility that the high arts don't really allow for.

I read a great deal, and my favorite current books might well show up in the "Things I Like" sidebar to this blog. I love film, especially art films of the '60s, Godard and especially Antonioni being my favorites. Which makes me feel very old, since I saw many of those films when they came out. On a more current tip, I'm wild about Wong Karwai.

If I had 14 days each week, or another life to live over again, I'd listen to a lot more Latin music and dance music, the two great roads not taken in my musical life. But then that's one of the great things about music -- it's just about inexhaustible, and when I think of all the Bach cantatas I haven't heard and all the Latin music I don't know, I'm actually happy. I've got a lot to live for. (Though I suspect that the Latin music, full of the wisdom and delights of the body, would wear in the long run better than the cantatas, which can bog down in dour Lutheran theology. And no, I'm not just saying that to be provocative. I actually had that experience, when I listened intently to many of them, when the complete Bach recordings came out from Teldec and Haenssler, and I reviewed them both for the Journal.)