I began my piano studies at age five, and by the time I was 14 I was hooked on music for life, practicing hard and spending all my allowance on bus trips into New York City to attend concerts and buy books and records. I still have some of those first LPs: Berg’s Wozzeck (Mitropoulos), Brahms’s Symphony No. 3 (Walter), Hindemith’s Four Temperaments (Aller), Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 (Bernstein), Ravel’s Piano Trio (Alma Trio). In those days my idol was Glenn Gould, so I didn’t listen to or play much Romantic music. In prep school I concentrated on academics, but in my senior year I was able to retreat to the practice room often enough to play a successful audition at Oberlin Conservatory, where my wonderful teacher Emil Danenberg quickly quashed my Gould mannerisms and fed me a strong diet of the right stuff. And I made a point of hearing recitals by every great pianist that I could—Moiseiwitsch, Rubinstein, Richter, Serkin, Michelangeli, Novaës, Arrau, and Horowitz. I then went to the University of Michigan, where I got my masters with Benning Dexter, a student of Liszt’s student Alexander Siloti. Next came two years of study in Rome with Busoni’s student Guido Agosti, followed by a doctorate at the University of Maryland with Stewart Gordon, who instilled in me a love of French music. After that I enjoyed my first teaching experiences and my first major recitals in New York, Washington, London, and Rome. On various occasions since then I’ve been able to play for some wonderful French pianists, including Gaby Casadesus, Monique Haas, Vlado Perlemuter, and Eric Heidsieck.

Writing has always been a major interest of mine, and I still remember the thrill of seeing my first words in print—a review of the harpsichordist Sylvia Marlowe I wrote at age 16. My record collection mushroomed in the 1970s and I devoured all the record magazines, especially Fanfare. Finally, one day in 1990 I approached Editor Joel Flegler about the possibility of being taken on as a critic. He agreed, and I have greatly enjoyed the association ever since. My other publications include French Pianism (Amadeus Press, 2nd ed., 1999), numerous articles in American and foreign journals, performing editions of Bizet’s Jeux d’enfants and Chopin’s Barcarolle (Alfred Publications, 2004 and 2007) and Prince of Virtuosos: A Biography of Walter Rummel, American Pianist (Scarecrow Press, 2005). Currently I am working on an edition of Mozart’s sonatas for piano duet.

I never tire of practicing and performing Schumann’s piano music, reading through unfamiliar chamber music and songs, listening to Mozart, Fauré, and Debussy, and reading the latest biographies of musicians. My main activity, though, is as professor of music at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where I enjoy teaching piano, piano pedagogy, and piano literature.