Marc Mandel

Marc Mandel joined the staff of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1978, managed and edited the BSO program book from 1979 to 2020, and was the BSO’s principal pre-concert speaker for many years. He also initiated the adult education series “BSO 101,” in which members of the orchestra joined him to discuss the music being played. He has written program notes for the Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall, and New York Philharmonic, among others; provided liner notes for BSO Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Philips, and Telarc; and reviewed compact discs for Fanfare Magazine for twenty years. After graduating as a biology major from Brandeis University, where he also studied music, he earned graduate degrees in music history and musicology from Yale University and Princeton University, respectively. He is co-editor of Defending the Music: Michael Steinberg at the Boston Globe, 1964-1976, to be published by Oxford University Press in April 2026.