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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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.
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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.