Freed, Richard (Donald)

Freed, Richard (Donald), distinguished American music critic, annotator, and broadcaster; b. Chicago, Dec. 27, 1928. He was educated at the Univ. of Chicago (graduated, 1947). After working for various newspapers, he was a contributor to the Saturday Review (1959–71) and a critic for the N.Y. Times (1965–66). He served as assistant to the director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. (1966–70). He was a contributing ed. to Stereo Review (1973–99) and a record critic for the Washington Star (1972–75), the Washington Post (1976–84), and radio station WETA-FM in Washington, D.C. (from 1985). He likewise was program annotator for the St. Louis Sym. Orch. (1973–96), the Philadelphia Orch. (1974–84), the Houston Sym. Orch. (1977–80), the National Sym. Orch. in Washington, D.C. (from 1977), the Baltimore Sym. Orch. (1984–92), and the Flint (Mich.) Sym. Orch. (from 1992). From 1974 to 1990 he was executive director of the Music Critics Assn., and was named consultant to the music director of the National Sym. Orch. in 1981. He received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award in 1984 for his erudite and engagingly indited program annotations, and again in 1986 for his equally stylish record annotations. In 1995 he received a Grammy Award for his perspicacious liner notes. He occasionally wrote under the names Paul Turner, Gregor Philipp, and Priam Clay

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire