Writers
List of writers who contribute to San Francisco Classical Voice. Click on the authors' names to see a list of their articles published by SFCV
Allan Kozinn (@kozinn) began writing about music for The New York Times in 1977, and served on its culture staff from 1991 to 2014. He was born in New York and studied music and journalism at Syracuse University.
Anatole Leikin is Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has published in various musicological journals and essay collections worldwide and recorded piano works of Scriabin, Chopin, and Cope. His critically acclaimed books The Performing Style of Alexander Scriabin and The Mystery of Chopin's Préludes were recently published by Ashgate Publishing (UK) and reissued by Routledge (UK). Dr. Leikin also serves as an editor for The Complete Chopin — A New Critical Edition (Peters, UK).
A Los Angeles native based in the Berkeley area since 1996, Andrew Gilbert covers jazz, international music and dance for KQED's California Report, The Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeleyside and other publications.
Be'eri Moalem (www.beeri.org) is a violist, teacher, writer, and composer.
Benjamin Frandzel has written on music and the arts for a wide range of publications. He has a background as a guitarist and composer, and has collaborated with dance, theater, and visual artists.
Brett Campbell writes about music for The Wall Street Journal, Willamette Week, Oregon Arts Watch, SFCV and many other publications.
Brett Campbell writes about music for The Wall Street Journal, Willamette Week, Oregon Arts Watch, SFCV and many other publications.
Bill Alves is a composer, writer, and video artist based in Southern California. He has written extensively for conventional acoustic instruments, non-Western instruments (especially Indonesian gamelan) and electronic media, often integrated with abstract animation. He teaches at Harvey Mudd College of the Claremont Colleges in Southern California.
Carlyn Kessler is an actively performing cellist and teacher in the Bay Area. She recently relocated from Cleveland, where she wrote for ClevelandClassical.com. She holds an M.M in Cello Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Charlise Tiee is a writer and painter. She reviews performances of classical music and audience behavior at The Opera Tattler.
David Bratman is a librarian who lives with his lawfully wedded soprano and a wall full of symphony recordings.
Edward Ortiz is an arts and science writer who has written for The Sacramento Bee, The Boston Globe, and The Providence Journal. He is also a contributor to Symphony Magazine and www.newmusicbox.org.
Giacomo Fiore is an Italian-born guitarist and musicologist specializing in U.S. Experimentalism and intonation. He teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory, USF, and UCSC.
Ilana Walder-Biesanz is an Associate Product Manager at Yahoo! and a freelance theater and opera reviewer. She holds a B.S. in Engineering from Olin College and an M.Phil. in European Literature from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates-Cambridge Scholar. She spent the past year on a Fulbright Scholarship in Germany watching and writing about theater and opera. Her reviews have been published in Bachtrack, Opera Online, the Operetta Research Archive, The Cambridge Student, Cambridge Theatre Review, and Stark Insider. Ilana is also a trained lyric mezzo-soprano and has appeared as a soloist in Baroque operas in Spain and England.
Janice Berman was an editor and senior writer at New York Newsday. She is a former editor in chief of Dance Magazine.
Janos Gereben appreciates news tips, corrections, and words of encouragement at [email protected].
Jason Victor Serinus is a music critic, professional whistler, and lecturer on classical vocal recordings. His credits includes Seattle Times, Listen, Opera News, Opera Now, American Record Guide, Stereophile, Classical Voice North America, Carnegie Hall Playbill, Gramophone, San Francisco Magazine, Stanford Live, Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco Examiner, AudioStream, and California Magazine.
Jeff Dunn is a freelance critic with a B.A. in music and a Ph.D. in geologic education. A composer of piano and vocal music, he is a member of the National Association of Composers, USA, a former president of Composers, Inc., and has served on the Board of New Music Bay Area.
Jeff Kaliss has featured and reviewed classical, jazz, rock, and world musics and other entertainment for the San Francisco Chronicle and a host of other regional, national, international, and web-based publications. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and is the author of I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone (Backbeat Books) and numerous textbook and encyclopedia entries, album liner notes, and festival program notes.
Jeffery S. McMillan is Senior Communications Manager for San Francisco Opera. He has written for Opera News, Musical America, and is the author of Delightfulee: The Life and Music of Lee Morgan.
Jerry Kuderna is a pianist who gives lecture/recitals every Friday at the Berkeley Arts festival.
Jesse Hamlin has written for The San Francisco Chronicle and other publications over the past 30 years on a wide range of music and art, covering jazz musicians and symphonic conductors, sculptors, poets, and architects. He has also written for The New York Times, Art & Auction and Columbia magazines, as well as liner notes for CDs by Stan Getz and Cal Tjader.
Jessica Balik is a flutist and has a PhD in historical musicology from Stanford University.
Jim Farber wrote his first classical music review in 1982 for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. Since then, he has been a feature writer and critic of classical music, opera, theater, and fine art for The Daily Variety, the Copley Newspapers and News Service, and the Los Angeles Newspaper Group (Media News).
Joe Cadagin is a doctoral student in musicology at Stanford University. His research focuses on post-war and contemporary opera, musical settings of Lewis Carroll, and the works of György Ligeti.
Katharine Dimitruk is a freelance photographer and music enthusiast based in the East Bay.
Ken Iisaka is a pianist, a software engineer, and bon vivant living in Foster City.
Lara Downes Lara Downes is a critically acclaimed concert pianist praised as "a delightful artist with a unique blend of musicianship and showmanship" (NPR), and for her "loving attention to mood and color" (The New York Times) and "range of drama and nuance" (The Washington Post). You can follow her musical adventures and exploits at laradownes.com.
Laura Clark is a soprano and freelance journalist based in England.
Laura Stanfield Prichard is a musicologist based in the Boston Area. She is a Visiting Researcher at Harvard and gives frequent lectures for the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, and Chicago Symphony.
Lily O'Brien is a freelance writer and editor with a passion for the performing arts. She has written feature articles and previews for a variety of publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Marin Independent Journal, and Strings Magazine. She is a singer who has performed professionally in a variety of genres, and an avid world traveler and bicyclist.
Lisa Hirsch is a technical writer. She studied music at Brandeis and Stony Brook, and blogs about classical music and opera at Iron Tongue of Midnight.
Lisa Houston is a soprano and writer from Berkeley. This season she will sing Beethoven’s “Ah Perfido!” with the Kensington Symphony Orchestra.
Lou Fancher is a San Francisco Bay Area writer. Her work has been published by WIRED.com, Diablo Magazine, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, InDance, East Bay Express, Oakland Magazine, SF Weekly, and others. She is a children's book author, designer and illustrator, with over 50 books in print. Also a choreographer, ballet master and teacher, she coaches professional ballet and contemporary dance companies in the U. S. and Canada. Visit her website online at www.johnsonandfancher.com.
Lucy Caplan is the recipient of the 2016 Rubin Prize for Music Criticism. She is a doctoral candidate at Yale, where she is writing a dissertation on opera and African American culture in the early 20th century.
Mark MacNamara, a San Francisco-based journalist, has written for such publications as Nautilus, Salon, The Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Vanity Fair. From time to time, his pieces in San Francisco Classical Voice also appear in ArtsJournal.com. Noteworthy examples include a piece about Philip Glass’s dream to build a cultural center on the Pacific Coast, an essay on classical music in the age of Ultra-Nationalism and a profile of sound composer Pamela Z. MacNamara recently won first place in digital features, in the 2017 Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards presented by the San Francisco Press Club. His website: macnamband.com.
Michael Zwiebach is the senior editor/ content manager for SFCV. He assigns all articles and content, manages the writing staff and does editing. A member of SFCV from the beginning, Michael holds a Ph.D. in music history from the University of California, Berkeley.
Journalist Molly Colin writes about the arts and cultural trends.
Nicholas Jones is a retired professor of English (Oberlin College) and a member of the board of Early Music America. He sings and plays recorder, violin, and viola da gamba in a number of early music groups in the Bay Area.
Niels Swinkels is a freelance journalist, musicologist, sound engineer, and radio producer. Born and raised in the Netherlands, he studied English and Musicology at the University of Nijmegen. Before moving to San Francisco, he was the Arts Editor, and Senior Classical Music & Opera critic for Brabants Dagblad, a Dutch daily newspaper. In addition to writing for the Classical Voice and others, he is producer for KALW’s Open Air, a weekly radio magazine for the Bay Area performing arts. He is also a wine guy at Trader Joe’s Nob Hill. Read more about Niels at his website.
Paul Kotapish is the managing editor for SFCV. You can learn more here or at guitarfish.net.
Peter Feher is SFCV's assistant editor. A recent graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he previously worked as SFCV’s journalism intern for the 2017-18 school year. He can be reached at [email protected].
Rebecca Wishnia recently earned her master’s degree in violin from UC Santa Cruz, where she studied with Roy Malan. A passionate chamber musician, she has performed in a variety of ensembles around the Bay Area, in addition to studying and teaching chamber repertoire at festivals each summer.
Richard S. Ginell writes regularly about music for the Los Angeles Times, Musical America.com, Classical Voice North America, and American Record Guide. He has also contributed to Gramophone and The Strad, among many other publications. In another lifetime, he was chief music critic of the Los Angeles Daily News.
Rodney Punt writes music criticism for SFCV, Classical Voice North America, Huffington Post, and LA Opus, the latter of which he also publishes. He is a career arts management professional.
Roger Wallace earned his B.A. in Music, focusing on composition, from Reed College. He currently teaches writing at Napa Valley College.
Scott Cmiel is Chair of the guitar and musicianship departments at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Preparatory Division and Director of the guitar program at San Francisco School of the Arts.
SFCV Editors are:
Michael Zwiebach is the senior editor/ content manager for SFCV. He assigns all articles and content, manages the writing staff and does editing. A member of SFCV from the beginning, Michael holds a Ph.D. in music history from the University of California, Berkeley.
Paul Kotapish is the managing editor for SFCV. You can learn more here or at guitarfish.net.
Peter Feher is SFCV's assistant editor. A recent graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he previously worked as SFCV’s journalism intern for the 2017-18 school year. He can be reached at [email protected].
Steve Osborn, a children's writer by day, moonlights as a violist and music critic.
Steven Winn is a San Francisco based free-lance writer and critic and frequent City Arts & Lectures interviewer. His work has appeared in Art News, California, Humanities, Manhattan, Symphony Magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle.
Tal Skloot is the owner of Tritonemedia, a production company that specializes in the performing arts and story based media. He has worked on numerous feature films and Emmy award winning documentaries. His documentary 'Freeway Philharmonic' recently toured the globe as part of the U.S. State Department sponsored American Documentary Showcase.
Tysen Dauer studies musicology at Stanford University. His current research focuses on the reception history of early American minimalism.
Wynne Delacoma was classical music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1991 to 2006. She is currently a freelance arts writer, lecturer, and adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
Yoshi Kato is an independent journalist from the South Bay who covers both popular and performing arts-oriented music and arts and entertainment in general. He tweets and is on Instagram as @yoshi140.
