Interview: A Love Letter to Philadelphia

Tom Di Nardo on The Philadelphia Music Book (2025)

Interview by Jeannie Gayle Pool (18 April 2026)

Jeannie Gayle Pool: I’m with Philadelphia writer Tom Di Nardo to talk about the new book, The Philadelphia Music Book: Sounds of a City (Camino Books, 2025). How did this book come about?

Tom Di Nardo: Larry Magid is a nationally renowned booking agent for rock and pop acts, best known for his Philadelphia-based company Electric Factory. He engineered the famous Live Aid concert and currently handles bookings for Bruce Springsteen. At this point in his life, he wanted to do something to celebrate the incredible musicians who came from Philadelphia.

The result was a long-term project involving nine writers and approximately 300 profiles covering opera singers, classical musicians, jazz players, rock and pop musicians, and faculty from various educational institutions and music conservatories — essentially everything to do with music in the city of Philadelphia. My earlier book, Listening to Musicians: 40 Years of the Philadelphia Orchestra (Jaygayle Music, 2016), explored many of the leading figures in Philadelphia’s classical music world and I was pleased to be asked to help with the project.

Pool: What’s wonderful about the new book are the fabulous photographs and the richly detailed profiles. It’s lavishly illustrated and beautifully designed.

Di Nardo: I was fortunate to be commissioned to write 65 of the profiles, mostly covering classical, opera, and jazz musicians — many of whom I had no idea had come from Philadelphia. A number of them, particularly those prominent in the 1970s and ’80s, knew one another and were widely recognized through their recordings.

Pool: ASMAC members will be particularly interested in the profiles of Philadelphia’s jazz musicians. Can you give us some names?

Di Nardo: Philadelphia turned out to be richer than even I knew — and I’ve lived there my entire life and wrote music reviews for The Philadelphia Daily News for nearly four decades. The list includes John Coltrane, Joe Wilder, the Brecker Brothers, Jeff Lorber, David Raksin, Pat Martino, Hank Mobley, Johnny Coles, Joey DeFrancesco, Christian McBride, Wallace Roney, Kevin Eubanks, Stanley Clarke, Jaco Pastorius, Grover Washington, Kenny Barron, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, Archie Shepp, Bobby Timmons, Rufus Harley, Shirley Scott, Nina Simone, Ray Bryant, Benny Golson, Clifford Brown, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Jimmy Smith, the Heath Brothers, Buddy DeFranco, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Ventura, Rex Stewart, and Eddie Lang. I was familiar with all of them, but had no idea they were all from Philadelphia.

Although my newspaper work focused primarily on classical music and opera, I have always loved jazz and knew the recordings of these players well. I felt very lucky to have been given this assignment. The real challenge was distilling an extraordinarily talented person’s life into 300 or 350 words. I approached it by listening to as many of their recordings as I possibly could, trying to capture the essence of their work in a way that would draw in readers who might not consider themselves jazz fans. Beyond the musical accomplishments, I wanted to convey something of each person’s spirit — the fact that these were people who simply had to play, regardless of the circumstances or the financial rewards.

Pool: Besides the jazz musicians, the book covers a tremendous range of artists — classical figures like André Watts and Sarah Chang, all of the Philadelphia Orchestra‘s conductors, the city’s music conservatories, and a wealth of rock and pop artists as well. There are also profiles of the club owners and venue operators who provided the stages where this music was made. In a sense, this book is a love letter to Philadelphia — and I imagine other cities, from Pittsburgh and Chicago to Nashville and Los Angeles, could do something similar to celebrate their own musical heritage. Your two books together paint a vivid picture of musical life in Philadelphia, with many of your reviews woven into your second book, Performers Tell Their Stories: 40 Years Inside the Arts (Jaygayle Books, 2016).

Di Nardo: When people ask Larry Magid how he became the most successful booking agent in the business, he always says it was simple: everybody got paid, no matter what. That wasn’t always the norm, so performers knew that if they came to Philadelphia, they would receive their full fee — even if attendance was disappointing. Because of that reputation, everyone wanted to play Philly, and Larry became the person every touring act called first.

I think at this stage of his life — after closing Electric Factory and focusing solely on Bruce Springsteen — Larry felt he owed Philadelphia a genuine celebration of what the city produced. The book is exactly what he envisioned. He assembled writers who were specialists in their respective genres, and we each wrote about what we knew best. There are even profiles of the Philadelphia DJs who helped these artists get noticed in the first place, alongside the club and venue owners who gave them a place to play.

About Tom Di Nardo

As a journalist with the Philadelphia Daily News, Di Nardo interviewed the world’s most renowned musicians. He is also the co-author of Emil Richards’ biography, Wonderful World of Percussion: My Life Behind Bars.

[ Ed. note: The Philadelphia Music Book: sound of a City, edited by Larry Magid, is available through Amazon as are Tom Di Nardo’s two books. You can also listen to a 53-minute interview with Tom Di Nardo on A Musical Life with Hugh Sung. ]