I’m Bradley Bambarger, a longtime music journalist based in New York City, and I will be working with Medici in developing its coverage of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and St. Petersburg, June 10 to July 3. In addition to helping produce video coverage of the events and people of the Tchaikovsky Competition, I will be writing a blog on the Tch15 site about working in Russia – my thoughts on the music, the places and the personalities I encounter while there. There have been so many world-historic happenings at the Tchaikovsky Competition over the past half-century-plus – and more than 10 past gold medalists will be on this year’s juries and available to be interviewed. It’s also an ideal occasion for reflection on the Competition’s namesake, this year being the 175th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s birth… I’m beyond excited to be collaborating with the great editorial and production team at medici.tv on bringing the Tchaikovsky Competition to a global audience of music lovers for the first time.
A bit about me: Over the years, I’ve written for publications ranging from Billboard and Rolling Stone to Gramophone and Musical America. I’m currently a contributing writer with the quarterly music magazine Listen (which I helped found), contributing feature stories and criticism to each issue. I also write regularly for the venerable jazz monthly DownBeat. All through the 1990s, I was a senior writer with the weekly Billboard magazine in New York, as well as its classical columnist. Going into the 21st century, I was executive editor of Billboard. I covered a world of music at Billboard, interviewing everyone from a Beatle to Boulez. After that, I was creative director for Andante, a pioneering classical Web’zine, book publisher and record label. And for many years, I was a staff music critic, columnist and reporter for The Star-Ledger daily newspaper, covering classical and popular music in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere in the U.S. I have been a consultant for the Metropolitan Opera and have written liner notes for the ECM, Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, RCA Victor and Anzic labels. Of late, I have co-produced a series of promotional videos for ECM, and I founded and curate an avant-jazz concert series called Sound It Out that just finished its third season at New York’s Greenwich House Music School, once a home away from home for Henry Cowell and Edgard Varèse, among other icons.
So, with this introduction out of the way, I’m looking forward to bringing the medici.tv audience both a journalistic and personal view of the Tchaikovsky Competition and a month in Russia, with its epic legacy of music in mind…
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