Philip Kennicott

is culture critic of the Washington Post, which he joined in August, 1999. He has served as classical music critic for the Detroit News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he also worked for two years as an editorial writer. In 2000, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorial writing, for a series that helped defeat passage of an NRA concealed handguns ballot initiative in Missouri. He also covered city politics and urban development. Kennicott graduated summa cum laude with a degree in philosophy from Yale in 1988. Prior to Yale, he spent two years at Deep Springs College, in California, and worked on a sheep ranch in New Zealand. Kennicott was born in upstate New York and moved to New York city after college where he worked as a freelance writer and editor. He served as senior editor of Musical America and editor of Chamber Music Magazine, which he redesigned and expanded from a quarterly to bimonthly publication. Kennicott is a reviewer and former columnist for Gramophone.