Anniversary issue

Above Death Valley, 2016.

I became a New Yorker staff writer twenty-five years ago, when Tina Brown made the inscrutable decision to hire a twenty-eight-year-old person as the magazine’s music critic. I am everlastingly grateful to have been given the opportunity. I thought I’d mark the occasion by choosing, out of the 750 or so pieces I’ve written for The New Yorker, twenty-five articles of which I’m especially fond. A number of them are caught up in personal experiences that are inseparable from the act of writing: moments of discovery, visits to remarkable places, memories of people who are gone. My three favorites, if anyone is wondering, are Death Valley, Luranah Aldridge, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Deep thanks to the hundreds of editors, copy-editors, fact-checkers, proofreaders, photographers, illustrators, make-up producers, web designers, and other New Yorker employees who have improved my work over the years; deepest thanks to David Remnick and Daniel Zalewski.

Schubert, Jan. 27, 1997.

Bob Dylan, May 10, 1999.

Kiki and Herb, May 19, 2003.

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, March 22, 2004.

Leon Fleisher master class, April 19, 2004.

Björk, Aug. 23, 2004.

In memoriam Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Sept. 25, 2006.

John Luther Adams, May 12, 2008.

Fictional composers, Aug. 24, 2009.

Meredith Monk, Nov. 9, 2009.

Gardiner's Bach cantatas, April 11, 2011.

Ten Bars of Wagner's Ring, April 25, 2011.

The Busoni Piano Concerto, Jan. 9, 2012.

Harry Kessler, April 23, 2012.

Love on the March, Nov. 12, 2012.

Shakespeare, Wagner, Aldridge, July 29, 2013.

Norman Lloyd, Dec. 14, 2015.

Music and violence, July 4, 2016.

Death Valley, Nov. 14, 2016.

Kate Soper, Feb. 27, 2017.

Willa Cather, Oct. 2, 2017.

Street Symphony, Jan. 1, 2018.

Salieri, June 3, 2019.

Bristlecone pines, Jan. 20, 2020.

My mother and Brahms, April 16, 2020.