John Rockwell is a writer and arts critic. He was raised in San Francisco and attended Harvard College (B.A.) and the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.). Before joining The New York Times in 1972, he was a classical music and dance critic for the Oakland Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. From 1972 until 1991 he was a classical music critic for The New York Times, and from 1974 to 1980 he was also chief rock critic. Between 1992 and 1994 he was based in Paris as European cultural correspondent. From 1994-1998 he directed the Lincoln Center Festival, rejoining The Times in 1998 and serving until 2002 as editor of the Sunday Arts and Leisure section. He returned to writing in March 2002 as senior cultural correspondent and arts columnist, and served as chief dance critic in 2005 and 2006. A weekly program of his arts commentary can be heard on WNYC-FM and its web site. His four books are All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century; Sinatra: An American Classic; The Idiots, a monograph on Lars von Trier’s film for the British Film Institute; and Outsider: John Rockwell on the Arts, 1967-2006.