DAVID BRITTAN is America's leading journalist who has a degree in classical accordion. He was born in Birmingham, England, lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, for a couple of years, then immigrated to the United States in the back seat of a heavily laden 1962 VW Bug. Growing up in Pasadena, California, he was a nerdy kid with many interests: science, especially backyard astronomy; drawing, which led to the production of a great many not-so-funny cartoons; creative writing (he won first prize in a Los Angeles County–wide short story contest, accepting his award from the hand of his idol, Joan Didion); and music. He studied several instruments, but none so energetically as the accordion, with which he placed fourth in an international competition in Portugal at the age of 17.
While majoring in the concert version of the "people's instrument" at San Diego State University, D.B. also pursued an interest in early music. He performed with two such ensembles, Alfonso X and the Aztec Marching Crumhorns.
In 1978, D.B. entered a Ph.D. program in musicology at Harvard University and was, for the first time in his life, bored to tears. Two years later, when a friend offered him a writing and editing job at the Kennedy School of Government, he was only too ready to switch tracks into the word trade. He has never looked back.
D.B.'s first commercial publishing job, at a magazine called High Technology, set him on a somewhat geeky trajectory. He has (as his résumé recounts) been an editor of MIT's Technology Review, Issues in Science and Technology, and IBM's Think Research, and has written for similar publications. But he is also a diehard generalist. He jumps at opportunities to write about education, business, music, or any other subject that involves big ideas and interesting people. His most exciting project ever was the creation of Saga, a general-interest magazine of which he was editor. Today, when not editing or writing, D.B. can usually be found bike riding, cooking, accompanying his wife (a stunning mezzo-soprano) on the piano, or raising exquisite children.
David Brittan is available for hire, either freelance or full-time.
|
