John Sargent Rockwell (born September 16, 1940) is an American

music critic '' The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of m ...

, dance critic and

arts administrator Arts administration (alternatively arts management) is a field in the arts sector that facilitates programming within cultural organizations. Arts administrators are responsible for facilitating the day-to-day operations of the organization as we ...

. According to ''

Grove Music Online ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and t ...

'', "Rockwell brings two signal attributes to his critical work: a genuine admiration for all kinds of music and the arts, and the ability to fit a spirit of inquiry and enthusiasm for newer approaches to music into a reasoned overview of cultural history".

Early life and education

Rockwell was born on September 16, 1940, to

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

attorney Alvin J. Rockwell (1908–1999) and Anna S. Hayward (1906–1983).Google Books, ''The International Who's Who''
(2004), 67th Edition, Europa Publications, 2003, , Library of Congress Catalog Card #35-10257, p. 1426. Retrieved April 30, 2018. He studied at

Phillips Academy Phillips Academy (also known as PA, Phillips Academy Andover, or simply Andover) is a Private school, private, Mixed-sex education, co-educational college-preparatory school for Boarding school, boarding and Day school, day students located in ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

, and the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, earning a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in German cultural history.

Career

Rockwell began his journalistic career at the ''

Oakland Tribune The ''Oakland Tribune'' was a daily newspaper published in Oakland, California, and a predecessor of the '' East Bay Times''. It was published by the Bay Area News Group (BANG), a subsidiary of MediaNews Group. Founded in 1874, the ''Tribune'' ...

'' and the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''. In 1972 he began writing at ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', first as a

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

critic and reporter, then also as the paper's chief

pop music Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop ...

critic, and, from 1992 to 1994, as the European cultural correspondent. Between 1994 and 1998, he served as the first director of the

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 ...

Festival. Rockwell returned to ''The New York Times'' to become the editor of the paper's Sunday Arts and Leisure section. In 2004, he was named the chief dance critic. He left the ''Times'' at the end of 2006 to pursue independent projects. Rockwell got his start in radio journalism at

WHRB WHRB is a commercial FM radio station in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It broadcasts at 95.3 MHz and is operated by students at Harvard College. The station is owned by Harvard Radio Broadcasting Co., Inc., a non-profit corporation independent ...

at Harvard and at

KPFA KPFA (94.1 FM) is a public, listener-funded talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed o ...

in Berkeley. On

WNYC WNYC is an audio service brand, under the control of New York Public Radio, a non-profit organization. Radio and other audio programming is primarily provided by a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations: WNYC (AM) and WNYC- ...

Radio, Rockwell examined cultural topics and events in the news for his weekly Monday-night segment, "Rockwell Matters", from October 2007 until May 2008. In January 2008, Rockwell was a Distinguished Visitor at the

American Academy in Berlin The American Academy in Berlin is a private, independent, nonpartisan research and cultural institution in Berlin dedicated to sustaining and enhancing the long-term intellectual, cultural, and political ties between the United States and German ...

. He is a ''Chevalier'' of the French Order of Arts & Letters.

Personal life

Rockwell currently lives in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

with his wife, Linda Mevorach. Their daughter, Sasha, resides in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Books

* * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rockwell, John 1940 births Living people 20th-century American journalists American dance critics American male journalists American music critics American music journalists Chevaliers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Harvard University alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni People from Washington, D.C. The New York Times people University of California, Berkeley alumni Writers from New York (state)