Lloyd Schwartz
Lloyd Schwartz is the classical music critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
For his writing about music, he has received the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism (1994), three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, and awards from the Amphion Foundation and the International Music Fraternity.
A selection of his Fresh Air reviews has been collected in the volume Music In—and On—the Air (Arrowsmith Press).
Since 2014, he has been Contributing Arts Critic for Boston's WBUR website. He is also the Poet Laureate of Somerville, Massachusetts, and the author of seven volumes of poems: most recently Who's on First? New and Selected Poems (University of Chicago Press, 2021), He Tells His Mother What He's Working On (Grolier Poetry Press, 2026), and "Artur Schnabel and Joseph Szigeti Play Mozart at the Frick Collection (April 4, 1948)" and other poems (Arrowsmith, 2026). He has received awards in poetry from the New England Poetry Club, the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the 2025 David Ferry and Ellen LaForge Annual Poetry Prize.
His editorial work includes Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art (University of Michigan Press, 1983), the Library of the America's Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters (2008), and the centennial edition of Bishop's Prose (FSG 2011). He is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
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The American mezzo-soprano died of cancer in 2006 at the age of 52. Her recordings are still being reissued. The latest is a beautifully remastered version of an album called Handel Arias.
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In 1970, Stephen Sondheim's comic musical Company broke most of the conventions of American musical theater. Now, a newly restored documentary goes inside the making of the original cast album.
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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.
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Two new CDs of serious music feels just right: Johnny Gandelsman plays violin transcriptions of Bach's Complete Cello Suites, and Kate Lindsey sings arias by Handel, Haydn, and Scarlatti on Arianna.
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Ellen West, a new one-act chamber opera presented by Opera Saratoga, is based on a tragic poem by Frank Bidart, while Poul Ruders' The Thirteenth Child draws on a relatively obscure Grimm fairy tale.
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Maria by Callas weaves together performance clips, home movies, interviews and poignant diary excepts to present an intimate portrait of the singer in her own words.
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Choreographer Bob Fosse and dancer Gwen Verdon light things up in this recently reissued movie version of the musical Damn Yankees. It was the only time the pair danced together on the big screen.