About the author.

I've been involved professionally in music and media for more than 30 years, and personally for even longer. I am currently employed as the Culture & Arts Editor for WNYC Radio and Gothamist. I started this newsletter in April 2020 as a reboot of my ASCAP Deems Taylor Award-winning blog, Night After Night.

If you'd like to send me something for consideration specifically in this newsletter, please send an email to nightafternight [at] iCloud [dot] com. Anything meant for WNYC or Gothamist use should go to stsmith@wnyc.org.

Among prior positions, I most recently was a senior editor on the Arts, Culture and Books desk at NPR, and a freelance contributor to the Goings On About Town section in The New Yorker. I previously was the inaugural director of publications for the Brooklyn-based concert venue and performing-arts incubator National Sawdust, serving as the editor and lead writer for National Sawdust Log (2016-20), a respected online journal of music journalism and criticism that showcased writing by established professionals and gifted emerging writers alike. The Log was recognized for support by the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, attesting to the quality the publication achieved during its brief existence.

Prior to that, I was an assistant arts editor at the Boston Globe (2014-16), directing coverage of classical and popular music and the visual arts at that esteemed newspaper. As a freelance critic and reporter for The New York Times (2007-14), I contributed multiple articles and reviews every week. At Time Out New York (2001-14), I initially handled classical music coverage, providing many now-prominent new-music artists and organizations with their initial coverage, and eventually assumed oversight for all of the magazine’s music coverage.

I've embraced an uncommonly broad stylistic range in my music coverage, which has appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, Billboard, Musical America, New Music Box, Jazziz, JazzTimes, DownBeat, The Wire, Signal to Noise [RIP], Chamber Music, Symphony, New Music Box, Decibel, and other publications. Along with my work as a writer and editor, I have extensive experience in public relations, radio broadcasting, and in-person interviewing, onstage and online.

I trained formally as a percussionist, and put my studies to work with jazz groups in San Antonio, in rock bands in Houston and New York, and with the Long Island Gilbert & Sullivan Society. I live in Queens with my wife, journalist and scholar Lara Pellegrinelli, our daughter, and two charismatic dogs.