In 1966 Wierzbicki entered the music program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, in pursuit of a degree in music education and with a career as a high school band director as his goal. Exposure to orchestral music and chamber music caused him to broaden his horizons, as did his rapidly developing ability as a clarinetist under the tutelage of his first real clarinet teacher (Jack Snavely). He switched his major in his junior year and in 1970 graduated with a B.F.A. degree in clarinet performance.

As an undergraduate at UW-M, Wierzbicki showed a deep interest in the theoretical, historical and philosophical aspects of music. Pondering his next step, he applied for and was accepted into graduate programs at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (in performance), Northwestern University (in musicology) and UW-M (in philosophy). Financial aid was offered by all three schools, but it was the offer of a full scholarship that led him to Cincinnati.

It was at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati that Wierzbicki  began to cultivate his abilities as a writer about music. He impressed his clarinet teacher (Richard Waller) by volunteering to write extensive program notes for both of his required recitals; he impressed his music theory and musicology professors (Donald Foster, James Riley, Donald Cooper, Paul Palumbo, et al.) not just with the thoroughness of his research and analysis but with the ludicity of his prose. 

After earning his M.M. in clarinet performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 1971, Wierzbicki spent a year directing the music program at Pio Nono High School in Milwaukee and another year leading wind ensembles -- and teaching woodwinds, music history and music theory -- at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. During this period he remained active as a performer (as clarinetist in an avant-garde music festival in Milwaukee, as substitute clarinetist with the Milwaukee Symphony, as guest artist with UW-M's faculty wind quintet, as bass clarinetist with the Wichita Symphony). And he was increasingly active as a writer. In Milwaukee he published several articles on new music for the UW-M campus newspaper and wrote the program notes for Yehudi Yannay's new music festival and for the university's symphony orchestra; in Kansas he contributed numerous reviews, interviews and feature articles to the Winfield Daily Courier.

In 1973 Wierzbicki returned to the University of Cincinnati and -- supported by a full scholarship -- entered the Ph.D. program in music (a program that places equal emphasis on music theory and musicology). Based on his journalistic publications to this point (and his participation in a Music Critics Association fellowship program in opera criticism in the summer of 1973),  the Cincinnati Post offered him the job of full-time music critic midway through his first year in the Ph.D. program; Wierzbicki accepted the position but nevertheless completed the program's required "year of residency." The next several seasons mixed full-time journalism with part-time course work and private study, with Felix Labunski, in composition. Certain performers on the Conservatory faculty were sensitively aware of Wierzbicki's position as music critic for the city's afternoon newspaper, but his musicology and music theory professors (Carol McClintock, Samuel Pogue, Philip Crabtree, Scott Huston, et al.) treated him as they would any other serious student of musicology; Wierzbicki quickly learned that to communicate successfully about music one needs to be aware of one's audience, and he had no problem meeting the very different writing stylistic demands of daily journalism and academia.

In 1977 Wierzbicki completed his Ph.D. course work and passed his qualifying exams in music theory and musicology. In 1978 he was appointed music critic for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and the next year he was awarded his Ph.D. (dissertation topic: "Burlesque Opera in London:1728-1739"). Freed from academic obligations, Wierzbicki resumed composing and wrote a number of works for piano and string quartet. Most of his energies, however, were concentrated on journalistic activity that emphasized detailed description and intense analysis of  contemporary music. For his efforts, Wierzbicki received a fellowship to a Music Critic Association institute for avant-garde music in 1979 and was  twice honored (in 1981, for a series on opera, and in 1983, for a series on the "great composers" of the late twentieth century) with ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Writing About Music.

Late in 1983, when the St. Louis Globe-Democrat announced that it was soon to go out of business, Wierzbicki was immediately offered the position of music critic at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. While at the Post-Dispatch he was cited (in the article on Criticism in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music) as one of three "younger critics whose work has attracted attention outside their immediate communities." Even when they concerned the so-called standard repertoire, his newspaper reviews were characterized by an emphasis not on performers but on music, and his Sunday articles (see writings index) were noted for their essay-like treatment of societal and aesthetic issues. Wierzbicki held the job of music critic at the Post-Dispatch until 1994.

The previous decade had seen a sharp increase in Wierzbicki's journalistic work (from 1982 to 1989 he hosted a weekly radio program, "Music of Our Time," for St. Louis' National Public Radio affiliate, from 1983 to 1992 he was a contributing editor for High Fidelity/Musical America magazine and from 1985 to 1991 he produced record reviews -- most of them having to do with contemporary music -- for NPR's "Performance Today" program). He had also been increasingly busy as a teacher (see résumé), a scholar (see academic writings) and a free-lance adjudicator and panelist (see consultancy). 

The decade before his retirement from music journalism also witnessed Wierzbicki 's emergence as composer. The purchase of a synthesizer and multi-track tape recorder in 1985 triggered intense but largely private compositional activity. In 1990 a television producer who heard some of these works commissioned Wierzbicki to write a score for a 60-minute documentary presented by the local Public Broadcasting System affililiate; this led to an offer from Agnes Wilcox to write incidental music for The New Theatre, which led to commissions from Washington University for incidental music for various plays and a complete performing edition of The Beggar's Opera, which in turn led to a productive relationship with the commercial television station KMOV (see résumé).

For Wierzbicki, the crescendo of pressures of journalistic/scholarly activity coincided fortuitously with rewards gained from his own compositions and the satisfactions of a new marriage. After two decades of increasingly intense careerism, Wierzbicki in 1994 decided it was time for a break. He asked for and was easily granted a transfer to the Post-Dispatch copy desk, and a year later he completed work on the audio CD "Letting Down: Music for New Mothers,"  In 1995, when his wife suggested a move to Seattle, Wierzbicki found it easy enough to pack his bags and head west.

After moving to Seattle in the fall of 1995, Wierzbicki in fact devoted most of his energies to raising two small children while his wife pursued graduate studies in the sociology department of the University of Washington. This was exhausting work, but whatever energy he had left was devoted to music composition (see recent works), a deliberately limited amount of gainful employment (see résumé) and -- most important -- private contemplation of the role of music in society and the importance of music in arenas apart from those traditionally associated with the so-called "classical" mainstream (in particular, the arenas of film music and so-called popular music).

Wierzbicki is of the opinion that several years of full-time parenthood provided him with a perspective that his earlier activities perhaps obscured. As a composer, he says, he has grown all the more stringent in his self-imposed demands that whatever ideas his own work might contain be communicated effectively and without ambiguity. As a critic, he feels less concerned than ever with passing judgment and far more interested than before in understanding music from its composer's point of view and explaining the phenomenon of music -- in all its many facets -- from the perspective of its listeners. Perhaps most important, as a teacher he has come to view himself primarily as a facilitator, someone whose principle job is to help lead students move from wherever they are vis-à-vis their understanding of a musical topic to wherever they might wish to be.

Upon his wife's completion of her Ph.D. and appointment to an assistant professorship in sociology at the University of California- Irvine, Wierzbicki was offered teaching positions at two universities in Southern California. During the first season he taught aural skills to freshman music majors and a class in music appreciation at Concordia University in Irvine; more significant, since the summer of 2001 he has been a lecturer at University of California-Irvine. During the 2001-2002 academic year his duties at UCI included a course in the music of George Gershwin, a practicum in writing about music and a survey of the history and aesthetics of film music; his 2002-2003 schedule at UCI included a graduate seminar in critical theory, a survey of the American avant-garde movement, a repeat of the class in film music, supervision of a graduate student's independent research project, a five-week lecture series for an audience of 250 non-music majors and the organization of a new music colloquium series; for the 2003-2004 academic year, he will teach a class titled "The Sonata," a graduate seminar in analysis and -- again -- the class in film music (see on-line syllabi.)

• e-mail at jwierz@sbcglobal.net or jwierz@uci.edu
• telephone at (949) 823-0159
• mail at 62 Harvey Court, Irvine, CA  92612