James M. Keller recently completed his 24th season as Program Annotator of the San Francisco Symphony. He is the author of Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide (Oxford University press) and is writing a sequel volume on piano music. He has contributed chapters to books including American Mavericks, George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound, and Leonard Bernstein, American Original.

In demand as a lecturer and interviewer, he was formerly Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic, a writer-editor at The New Yorker, and critic-at-large for the Santa Fe New Mexican. He has curated major museum exhibitions in California and New Mexico about historical popular music relating to those states.