
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 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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A new two-CD set features music inspired by Shakespeare as well as actors reading his work. Critic Lloyd Schwartz says any excuse to honor the master playwright is a good one.
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The new Broadway musical was inspired by the hit 1951 Hollywood musical starring Gene Kelly, with music by George Gershwin. Critic Lloyd Schwartz explains why he hopes a lot of people see the show.
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Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen explores questions of time, memory, nature and human isolation. His recent collaboration with soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan has garnered worldwide attention.
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The inaugural show at the Metropolitan Museum's Met Breuer branch raises the question of what makes a finished work of art. Critic Lloyd Schwartz calls it "an astonishing gathering of masterpieces."
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When his mother was turning 90, music critic Lloyd Schwartz wrote poems that put her memories into verse. Composer Mohammed Fairouz set three of the poems to music on the new recording, No Orpheus.
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The opera, by the late composer Maurice Ravel, spins a modern fairy tale about a naughty child at bedtime. Critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new recording of it by conductor Seiji Ozawa.
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In 1955 and '56, NBC aired live telecasts of the Broadway hit Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin. Critic Lloyd Schwartz calls the performances, now available on Blu-ray, a "tribute to freedom and youth."
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A two-CD set featuring performers from the Lyric Stage of Irving, Texas, revives the complete score of the 1954 musical, The Golden Apple. Critic Lloyd Schwartz calls it a "game-changing" recording.