Martin M. Goldsmith

Born in St. Louis in 1952, he grew up in a deeply musical family: his father was flutist Gunther Goldschmidt and his mother, violist Rosemarie Gumpert Goldschmidt, later played for many years with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He studied at Johns Hopkins University and also plays the French horn.

His career has been closely tied to classical music broadcasting. After early work at WCLV in Cleveland and WETA-FM in Washington, he joined NPR in the 1980s and went on to host Performance Today from 1989 to 1999. He later became the founding director of classical music programming at XM Satellite Radio, helping bring classical music to a wider national audience.

As an author, he is best known for The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany, which explores his parents' experiences in the Jewish Kulturbund under Nazi rule. The book is often praised for blending personal family history with a larger story about music, endurance, and the lives people fought to preserve.