Geoffrey Himes is an American music critic who has written weekly for the Washington Post since 1977. [1] He also wrote for No Depression as a contributing editor in its first print era in the late 1990s to the early 2000s [2] and has written for Paste since 2004. [3] He has written lyrics for songs that have been recorded by multiple artists, including Billy Kemp & the Paradise Rockers and Mojo Filter. [4] He has won the Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers four times (in 2002, 2005, 2014, and 2016). [5] [6] [7]
Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor, author and composer.
Joseph Deems Taylor was an American composer, radio commentator, music critic and author. Nat Benchley, co-editor of The Lost Algonquin Roundtable, referred to him as "the dean of American music." He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1934.
David Ritz is an American author. He has written novels, biographies, magazine articles, and over a hundred liner notes for artists such as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Nat King Cole. He has coauthored 36 autobiographies, including some celebrities' autobiographies.
Anthony Carl Tommasini is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "a discerning critic, whose taste, knowledge and judgment have made him a must-read", Tommasini was the chief classical music critic for The New York Times from 2000 to 2021. Also a pianist, he has released two CDS and two books on the music of his colleague and mentor, the composer and critic Virgil Thomson.
Lorraine McKenna is an American folk, Americana, and country music singer-songwriter. In 2016, she was nominated for the Grammy Award for Song of the Year and won Best Country Song for co-writing the hit single "Girl Crush" performed by Little Big Town. In 2017, she again won Best Country Song at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards for writing "Humble and Kind" performed by Tim McGraw. McKenna along with Lady Gaga, Natalie Hemby and Hillary Lindsey wrote the second single off the soundtrack to the 2018 film A Star Is Born called "Always Remember Us This Way.” McKenna performed backing vocals along with Lindsey and Hemby, and the song received a nomination for Song of the Year at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards.
Kirke Mechem is an American composer. His first opera, Tartuffe, with over 450 performances in nine countries, has become one of the most popular operas written by an American. He has composed more than 250 works in almost every form. In 2002, ASCAP registered performances of his music in 42 countries. He has been called the "dean of American choral composers". His memoir, Believe Your Ears: Life of a Lyric Composer, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015; it won ASCAP Foundation's 48th annual Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for outstanding musical biography.
Robert James Sheffield is an American music journalist and author.
David Yaffe is an American academic, who grew up in Dallas, Texas, where he attended the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He received his BA from Sarah Lawrence, and he began writing for The Village Voice while he was a student there. He received his Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is a professor of humanities at Syracuse University — where he began teaching in 2005 – and is known for his critical writings on music. During the 2008–2009 academic year, he was the Gould Faculty Fellow in the Humanities at Claremont McKenna College. He subsequently returned to Syracuse. He taught in the English department from 2005 to 2013, then received tenure from the university, and has been an unaffiliated professor of humanities ever since. He served as the Dean's Fellow in the Humanities from 2013 to 2015. His writings have appeared in many publications, including the New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Bookforum, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, Slate, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Since 2021, he has been a regular contributor to Air Mail.
David Dubal is an American pianist, teacher, author, lecturer, broadcaster, and painter.
Joseph Horowitz is an American cultural historian who writes mainly about the institutional history of classical music in the United States. As a concert producer, he promotes thematic programming and new concert formats. His tenure as artistic advisor and subsequently executive director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (1992–1997) attracted national attention for its radical departure from tradition. He is the host of the "More than Music" radio series on 1A, distributed by NPR.
Ted Gioia is an American jazz critic and music historian. He is author of eleven books, including Music: A Subversive History, The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, The History of Jazz and Delta Blues. He is also a jazz musician and one of the founders of Stanford University's jazz studies program.
Lisa Carol Bielawa is a composer and vocalist. She is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and spent a year composing as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
Kenneth Tucker is an American arts, music and television critic, magazine editor, and non-fiction book writer.
Joel Little is a New Zealand record producer, musician and Grammy Award-winning songwriter. He is best known for his work as a writer and producer with artists Lorde, Taylor Swift, Broods, Sam Smith, Imagine Dragons, Ellie Goulding, Khalid, Elliphant, Jarryd James, Shawn Mendes, Marina Diamandis, Amy Shark, Goodnight Nurse, Noah Kahan, Years & Years, the Jonas Brothers, and Niall Horan.
Annalyn Swan is an American writer and biographer who has written extensively about the arts. With her husband, art critic Mark Stevens, she is the author of de Kooning: An American Master (2004), a biography of Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning, which was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. De Kooning also won the National Book Critics Circle prize for biography and the Los Angeles Times biography award, and was named one of the 10 best books of 2005 by The New York Times. In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote: "The elusiveness of its subject makes the achievements of de Kooning: An American Master that much more dazzling."
Adam King Feeney, better known as Ging and by his former stage name Frank Dukes, is a Canadian musician, record producer, and songwriter. A prolific producer, he has worked with artists including Lorde for Melodrama, Camila Cabello, Post Malone and The Weeknd. Following a two decade production career, he retired as Frank Dukes in 2021 to pursue his own music and art as Ging; he released his debut solo album We're Here, My Dear in 2022.
Natasha Tameika Cobbs Leonard is an American gospel musician and songwriter. She released the extended play Grace in 2013 with the hit lead single "Break Every Chain". The EP reached No. 61 on the Billboard charts.