Jeremy Adam Eichler was born on August 13, 1974. Growing up in
Newton, Massachusetts, he played violin and viola in his youth, playing the latter in
youth orchestras. He received an undergraduate degree from
Brown University, and in 2003 began writing
music criticism for
The New York Times. His
column, titled "Third Ear", connected "music with broader worlds of history, politics, and culture." The historian
Lizabeth Cohen said of Eichler’s criticism, “In his hands, cultural history and music criticism become entryways to better understandings of the past and the present.” Eichler is also a
cultural historian. He earned a doctorate in
history from
Columbia University; his doctoral dissertation was on the composer
Arnold Schoenberg. According to Eichler, it invites readers to consider how "classical music in particular can serve as a gateway to the past, deepening our sense of understanding, empathy, and felt contact with history." The narrative focuses on the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust, and among the works discussed are
Benjamin Britten's
War Requiem,
Dmitri Shostakovich's
Symphony No. 13, Babi Yar and
Metamorphosen by
Richard Strauss. and has been translated into ten languages. In 2024-25, Eichler served as the first Writer-in-Residence of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which devoted its season to exploring the relationship between music and memory. ==Awards and Honors==