TV Notes By Martin Bookspan

MARTIN BOOKSPAN was Commentator for LIVE FROM LINCOLN CENTER for 30 years, since the very first broadcast in January, 1976 until our 30th Anniversary broadcast in 2006. Martin's lifelong love and appreciation for music and all the performing arts have fueled and shaped his distinguished career in both print and broadcast media, which has included associations with the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, classical music radio station WQXR, and television Channel 7 News and Channel 11 News in New York City. Martin Bookspan is the author of 101 Masterpieces of Music and Their Composers (Doubleday) and Consumer Reports Reviews: Classical Recordings (Consumers Union), as well as biographies of Zubin Mehta and André Previn, written with Ross Yockey.

Asked how it all started, Martin stated: "I grew up in the days before television, listening to music on the radio and records. And I loved classical music and musicians - especially Heifetz and Koussevitzky. In fact, I set out to become a violinist! But eventually - after a couple of what I like to call 'educational' experiences onstage!- I decided I wasn't going to be my generation's Heifetz. I remember sitting on the steps of the Boston tenement I lived in, when I was about twelve, talking to the girl next door about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I don't recall what she said, but I remember telling her, 'I want a life in music, and I want to talk on the radio about music and help people enjoy it.' I loved talking about music- and I still do. So broadcasting and journalism were a natural choice."

In the non-broadcast arena, Martin Bookspan has served as a consultant to the Arts Program of the Rockefeller Foundation, as a panelist on numerous programs of the National Endowment for the Arts, as Director of the Concert Division of ASCAP, and as board member of a variety of musical organizations. He currently serves as Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.

In celebrating his 80th birthday at Tanglewood in the summer of 2006, the Boston Symphony Orchestra dedicated a concert broadcast to his fabled career. He not only served as co-host, but excerpts were played from interviews he conducted with Serge Koussevitzky (1949) and Leonard Bernstein (1989).

In November, 2006 he will have been inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in Cincinnati---the first broadcaster to be so honored.