John W. Lambert

Since 1977, John W. Lambert, has written reviews and articles published, variously, by The News and Observer, Leader, Spectator, Fanfare, Fi, Independent, CVNC, and CVNA. His studies included violin, piano, voice, and music history. A sketch of his thesis, on the North Carolina Symphony's first 50 years, was published by Greenwood Press, in Symphony Orchestras of the United States: Selected Profiles (ed. Robert R. Craven); and his liner notes for several Toscanini Lps were published by Music and Arts Programs of America, Inc. His latest major publication is The North Carolina Symphony: A History, written in cooperation with Joe A. Mobley, with a foreward by Roy C. Dicks.

He is a recipient of the Raleigh Medal of Arts, the Durham Symphony's "Share the Music" Award, and a Triangle Arts Award.

Lambert is a member of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections and an avid collector of recordings. Ever mindful of his late critical mentor Nell Hirschberg's oft'-repeated admonition to continue writing (because, as she said, "People die when they use up the number of words allocated to them in their lifetimes"), he hopes to live long enough to annotate "best-available" transfers of all of Toscanini's NBC Symphony broadcasts (1937-54), a listening (and collecting) project he began when he was 11 – a musical journey that is documented in this valedictory article.

He cherishes the memory of his time in Uncle Sugar's Canoe Club, including a deployment to Vietnam aboard the Navy's last 8" rapid-fire cruiser, the USS NEWPORT NEWS; he retired after 26+ years of combined active and reserve service, the latter including a substantial hitch in military shipping. His civilian "day jobs" were largely in private-sector and government purchasing and technical writing. He retired as a business officer with NC's Department of Health and Human Services in September 2010.

He is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America and serves on the production team of Classical Voice North America.

(Revised 10/2022.)

Articles by John W. Lambert:

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