Martin Perlich

Who is Martin Perlich?

Martin Perlich, born 1937 in Cleveland, Ohio is an American broadcaster and writer. He attended Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio and Columbia University where he studied music history with composer Douglas Moore.

After a one-off 1965 interview with Leonard Bernstein for WCLV in Cleveland he went on to become the first Intermission Host of the syndicated Cleveland Orchestra radio broadcasts, working closely with Musical Director George Szell. During his seven years as host, he interviewed hundreds of musicians, including Aaron Copland, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Fiedler, Robert Shaw, and Isaac Stern.

In late 1966 Perlich debuted the Perlich Project on WCLV, a mixture of classical music with early selections of progressive rock, poetry, radical comedy and jazz, along with Perlich's own personal comments and editorials on events of the day. His show was one of the earliest such shows on commercial radio and a model for the progressive rock medium. Perlich later moved his program to noted Cleveland rock station WMMS during its early, pre-Buzzard days as a progressive rock outlet.