1. Richard Donald Freed was an American music critic, program annotator and administrator.
14 Facts About Richard Freed
2.
Richard Freed was noted for the concert program notes he authored for various orchestras and ensembles in the US.
3.
Richard Freed's father immigrated to the United States from Russia and ran a furniture store; his mother was a housewife.
4.
Richard Freed was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he read about music and records with the 1941 Victor catalog as bedside book.
5.
Richard Freed studied at the University of Chicago where he received his Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1947.
6.
Richard Freed went on to be assistant director to Irving Kolodin from 1962 to 1963, and as a staff critic for The New York Times and The Audio Beat two years later.
7.
Richard Freed was an assistant to the director of the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and director of public relations for the St Louis Symphony Orchestra.
8.
Richard Freed was executive director of the Music Critics Association of North America from 1974 to 1990 and served as a contributing editor of Stereo Review, as record critic for The Washington Star and The Washington Post, radio host for the concerts of the St Louis and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and program annotator for those orchestras as well as the Houston Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra.
9.
Richard Freed received two ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for his concert and record annotations, and a Grammy Award for the latter and as consultant to the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra.
10.
Richard Freed received the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Award, the ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers Award, Deems Taylor Award for his concert and record notes.
11.
Richard Freed was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes in 1986 and won in 1995.
12.
Richard Freed was married to Louise Kono for 63 years until his death.
13.
Richard Freed died on January 1,2022, at his home in Rockville, Maryland.
14.
Richard Freed was 93, and suffered a heart attack prior to his death.