Martin Bookspan, who turned a classical music childhood into a career as an announcer for the television shows “Live From Lincoln Center” and radio shows for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, died on April 29 at his Aventura home. Fla. He was 94 years old.
The cause was heart failure, said his daughter Rachel Sobel.
Mr Bookspan started violin lessons at the age of 6, but when he entered college he realized that he would never be the next Fritz Kreisler or Jascha Heifetz. After an early career behind the scenes at radio stations in Boston and New York, he established himself as a steadfast contributor to Live From Lincoln Center, the PBS show that became America’s premier source of classical music on radio television. He joined the program when it aired in 1976.
“Live From Lincoln Center” was not much different to him than radio – it was heard but not seen. He opened the show and then handed it over to presenters such as Beverly Sills, Dick Cavett or Hugh Downs.
“The camera was never on Marty,” said John Goberman, the program’s longtime executive producer. But, he added, Mr. Bookspan “was more than just the announcer. The convenient and familiar part of every show was Marty Bookspan. “
Mr. Bookspan’s voice “didn’t sound like a lion,” said Mr. Goberman. “He spoke in a very uncomplicated, friendly and talkative manner.” The Palm Beach Post, describing Mr. Bookspan’s voice after an interview in 1994, said, “Even on the phone, it’s a voice that resonates with the undiluted atmosphere of high culture, the kind of voice you get on a public Hear TV promises could drive. But it’s not so stuffy that you can’t imagine delivering your favorite team’s game after game. “
Mr Bookspan himself said: “If I have a technique, it is the sportcaster technique.”
“With sports promoters bringing the game to life, I hope I’ve brought concerts to life,” he said in 2006 as he prepared to leave Live From Lincoln Center after 30 years. “I want the audience to be engaged and love what they hear.”
By then, Live From Lincoln Center audiences were used to hearing his warm-up exercises before the concert and his withdrawals after the concert. With a well-dressed crowd in the audience and well-known actors on stage, the action had an air of glamor, but not necessarily for Mr. Bookspan. He and his microphone were sometimes installed in locker rooms and closets – even in Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, in a women’s bathroom. He was connected to the stage through his headphones and a video monitor.
Martin Bookspan was born on July 30, 1926 in Boston. His father Simon was a dry goods salesman who later switched to selling insurance. his mother Martha (Schwartz) Bookspan was a housewife. Simon Bookspan was passionate about Jewish liturgical music and took his son to hear prominent cantors.
At Harvard, Martin did not study music, but German literature. He graduated with honors in 1947.
He could also be heard on the campus radio station, where he conducted his first important interview in 1944. His guest was composer Aaron Copland, who revealed he was considering writing a piece for choreographer Martha Graham. It turned out to be the ballet “Appalachian Spring”.
In his future radio career, Mr. Bookspan interviewed more than 1,000 performers and composers, from the conductor Maurice Abravanel to the composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
After working as music director at WBMS, a classical music broadcaster in Boston, he joined the Boston Symphony staff in 1954 as radio, television and recording coordinator. In 1956 he moved to New York to become director of music recording at WQXR, then owned by the New York Times.
At WQXR he hired John Corigliano, then a young composer, as an assistant. He turned out to be a concerned boss.
Mr Corigliano called sick one summer morning. “I should have known better because Marty was so considerate that he called later that afternoon,” said Corigliano, who won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Music, in an interview. “I went to the beach. Marty called and my roommate answered the phone. Marty said, “How is John doing?” My roommate said, “Oh, he’s great. He’s on the beach. ‘
“I came in the next day. There is Marty. I approached him slowly and said, ‘I’ll never do it again.’ “
Mr. Bookspan left WQXR in 1967 and joined the ASCAP music licensing agency as the coordinator for symphony and concert activities. He later was Vice President and Director of Artists and Repertoire at Moss Music Group, an artist management agency. He was also an Associate Professor of Music at New York University.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he was an art critic for several television networks, including WABC and WPIX in New York and WNAC (now WHDH) in Boston. He hosted “The Eternal Light,” an NBC program produced with the Jewish Theological Seminary, and announced the CBS soap opera “The Guiding Light” in the 1990s and early 2000s.
He also wrote reviews of recordings for the New York Times (on open-role tapes in the 1960s and on CDs in the 1990s). He wrote several books, including “101 Masterpieces of Music and Its Composers” (1968) and, with Ross Yockey, biographies of the conductors André Previn and Zubin Mehta. He oversaw radio broadcasts for the Boston Symphony and later for the New York Philharmonic.
His wife, Janet Bookspan, died in 2008. In addition to Mrs. Sobel, a son, David, survived; another daughter, Deborah Margol; six grandchildren; and a great grandson.
Tenor Jan Peerce called Mr. Bookspan’s musical knowledge “encyclopedic,” and it served him well when he had to ad libitum.
One night in 1959 he was the announcer for a program on the Boston Symphony in which pianist Rudolf Serkin played Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. Mr. Bookspan made his usual introduction before Serkin and conductor Charles Munch took the stage. Mr. Bookspan told The Berkshire Eagle in March that after the immersion, she said, “I did what I learned that I should never do it again: I left my booth.”
He went into the green room with Serkin, who “struck off with all his might, hit the pedals for everything they were worth, got caught up in work and didn’t notice anything else” – as Mr. Bookspan recalled in another interview to chat with Aaron Copland who was on hand for the concert.
Suddenly there was silence in Brahms’s second movement.
“I ran across the stage and up the stairs, tapping the news that there was a problem with the piano,” he told The Eagle. “I went to the microphone and puffed and puffed and said, ‘There was a problem with the piano’ and that ‘as soon as I catch my breath I’ll tell you what’s going on.'”
Mr. Bookspan spoke non-stop for more than 15 minutes until the piano was repaired and Serkin and the orchestra started playing again.
