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Justin Davidson

eMusic Contributor

Articles: 162

Justin Davidson has been the classical music and architecture critic at New York magazine since 2007. Before that, he was classical music critic at Newsday, where he also wrote about architecture and won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2002. A native of Rome, Davidson graduated from Harvard and later earned a doctoral degree in music composition at Columbia University. He has contributed to the New Yorker, the New York Times, W., Travel and Leisure, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, and Salon. He has taught writing at the School of Visual Arts, Syracuse University, and the NEA’s annual Arts Journalism Institutes.

After spending a year on a music fellowship in Paris, Davidson moved to New York City to pursue a doctoral degree in music composition at Columbia University, where he also was instructor and later adjunct professor of music. His compositions, which have been performed in the US, Italy, China and Eastern Europe, have won him grants and awards from the American Academy/ Institute of Arts and Letters, the Mellon Foundation, Meet the Composer, Columbia University and the Fondation des Etats-unis in Paris.

He joined the staff of Newsday in 1996. In 2003, he added a second beat to his brief, becoming the paper’s first architecture critic.

Justin Davidson Archive

1-24 of 162

The Mutable Beauty of Bach…

Bach’s B minor Mass is a masterpiece that by rights shouldn’t… more »

How to Write for Violin in th…

At 14, when my ears were fresh and my soul pliable, I attended a string q… more »

The Joyous Rage of Joyce DiDo…

Baroque opera is a primeval emotional landscape populated by terrifying c… more »

Gabriel Kahane: Hipster Wistf…

It’s a wonderful thing to be talented, versatile, 30-ish, well conn… more »

The Mystery of Johannes Ockeg…

It’s astonishing how little we know, or can intuit, about the most … more »

So Percussion and the Rise of…

Of all the long-oppressed minorities who can finally enjoy a measure of f… more »

Gustavo Dudamel: Electric Sup…

The most electric young conductor on the orchestral scene today is less a… more »

The Endlessly Shape-Shifting …

The Emerson Quartet has spent decades as a nimble monument. For nearly 30… more »

The Terrifying Intimacy of Di…

Here’s how I remember my early encounters with Dietrich Fischer-Die… more »

Jeremy Denk: Connoisseur of C…

Like many self-afflicting perfectionists, the pianist Jeremy Denk probabl… more »

L’Arpeggiata: The Beaut…

Suddenly, all the world’s a playlist. Styles mix, traditions intert… more »

The Giant, Life-Affirming Tal…

On a recording, Thomas Quasthoff sounds like a happy fluke of nature. As … more »

In Defense of Lang Lang

If Lang Lang were only a pianist, he might not be the greatest one alive.… more »

Icon: The Kronos Quartet

“Music is a huge place,” violinist David Harrington once said… more »

Discover: Italian Opera

Italian opera has always been an international affair. One of its greates… more »

John Adams, Shaker Loops…

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams’s hugely successful stag… more »

Alicia De Larrocha, Goyescas…

Alicia De Larrocha, the grande dame of Spanish piano music, practically i… more »

Alban Berg Quartett/Heinrich …

For connoisseurs of the sublime, Schubert's string quintet is a kind … more »

Wilhelm Furtwängler/Phil…

Opera recordings rarely become legendary any more — there are too m… more »

Maria Callas, La Divina Box S…

Maria Callas could swerve between doomed tenderness, wistful charm, vindi… more »

Martha Argerich, Chopin: The …

In 1965, a mercurial 24-year-old Argentinian pianist with a dense mane of… more »

Natalie Dessay, French Opera …

Natalie Dessay's quicksilver soprano darts so effortlessly into cryst… more »

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Sch…

Schubert's song cycle is about returning single-mindedly to irretriev… more »

Borodin Quartet, Shostakovich…

Shostakovich's 15 harrowing, confessional and bleakly beautiful strin… more »

1-24 of 162

eMusic Radio

5

Kicking at the Boundaries of Metal

By Jon Wiederhorn, eMusic Contributor

As they age, extreme metal merchants often inject various non-metallic styles into their songs in order to hasten their musical growth. Sometimes, as with Alcest and Jesu, they develop to the point where their original… more »

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