Greg Sandow

Greg Sandow (born June 3, 1943) is an American music critic and composer. For many years, he was best known as a critic, both of classical music and pop. But more recently he moved journalism to a back burner, revived a composing career that he abandoned in the 1980s, and began writing and speaking about the future of classical music, a subject that has become his specialty.

As a critic, Sandow wrote for "The Village Voice" in the 1980s, when it was New York’s leading weekly newspaper. His column was on new classical music, though he also wrote about the mainstream repertory, typically challenging traditional assumptions about its function and its meaning. Lately his writing has appeared in the "New York Times Book Review" and also in the "Wall Street Journal", where for many years he was a regular contributor. In pop music, he became chief pop critic of the "Los Angeles Herald-Examiner" in 1988, and in 1990 joined the staff of "Entertainment Weekly", where he served first as music critic and then as senior music editor.

His music has been played by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Fine Arts Quartet, and St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble. His writing on the future of classical music appears in his [http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ blog] and in a book that has been appearing, in draft form, in installments [http://www.artsjournal.com/greg/ online] . He has also done consulting work and other special projects with classical music institutions, including the Cleveland Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony. Since 1997 he has taught at the Juilliard School as a member of the Graduate Studies Faculty, and since 2006 has also taught at the Eastman School of Music, where he gave the commencement address in 2008. He is married to Anne Midgette, for many years a classical music reviewer for the New York Times, and now chief classical music critic for the Washington Post. They live in Manhattan, Washington, D.C., and Warwick, New York.