Justin Davidson



Justin Davidson (born May 16, 1966) is an American classical music and architecture critic of Italian birth. He has been the New York magazine's critic in both disciplines since 2007.

He won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for "his crisp coverage of classical music that captures its essence."

Life and career
Justin Davidson was born in Rome, Italy on May 16, 1966. In 1983, he graduated from the American Overseas School of Rome, where his mother was an English teacher. Davidson began his journalism career as a local stringer for the Associated Press in Rome, before moving to the United States to study music at Harvard University. He went on to earn a doctorate degree at Columbia University, where he also taught.

A composer as well as a music critic, Davidson became a staff writer for the Long Island newspaper Newsday in 1996, where he also wrote about architecture. In 2002, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, for "his crisp coverage of classical music that captures its essence." In September 2007, he was hired by New York magazine. Fellow music critic Jayson Greene stated that "Davidson situates classical music in the same cultural conversation as other art forms, and his dynamic prose is rich with vivid allusions to, for example, photography and painting." As of 2021, Davidson and Alex Ross at The New Yorker are the only classical music critics who write regularly for a general-interest American magazine.

Davidson was among the faculty of D-Crit, and has taught courses at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

He is married to Ariella Budick, a New York–based art critic for the Financial Times.