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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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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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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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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Lloyd Schwartz discusses the timeless appeal of the late choreographer George Balanchine. "[He] was our Shakespeare. ... watching a Balanchine ballet is like watching music come alive," he says.
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The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has assembled one of the largest exhibits of Goya's artwork ever seen in the U.S. His paintings, prints and drawings range in technique from exquisitely refined to raw.
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With an unforgettable story and score, the 1927 musical tackled complex racial issues. Music critic Lloyd Schwartz says the 1936 film version of Show Boat is the best — and it's now out on DVD.
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In 1937, two Nazi art shows aimed to teach the public to despise modernist art and show them what art should be. An exhibit at New York's Neue Galerie reunites works from both landmark shows.
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New York City is home to more paintings by Johannes Vermeer — eight — than any other city. And until mid-January, it's playing host to one more: the world-renowned Girl with a Pearl Earring. Critic Lloyd Schwartz says, since the painting's 1994 restoration, "It's even more breathtaking than I remembered."
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Director Kenneth Branagh has given us fresh Shakespeare and witty modern comedies of manners, and some years ago he turned to opera, with an adaptation of Mozart's classic set in World War I. It's finally available in the U.S., and critic Lloyd Schwartz says the results are disappointingly mixed.