New York magazine editor-in-chief Adam Moss announced today that Justin Davidson will be the magazine’s new classical music and architecture critic. Davidson will join New York magazine’s staff and begin writing reviews and features on both subjects in September 2007.

Davidson comes to New York magazine from Newsday, where he has worked as classical music critic since 1996. In 2002, he won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism; the same year he added the architecture beat to his portfolio as Newsday’s first architecture critic. He has written about both music and architecture for The New Yorker, and has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, and Opera News. He is a regular columnist for the Website E-music and a periodic guest on the WNYC music talk show Soundcheck.

“Justin Davidson is a unique talent in his fluency in both classical music and architecture—topics of great importance to this city and this magazine,” said Adam Moss. “We look forward to increasing our coverage of both subjects and are excited to have such an accomplished writer and thinker join our team.”

Davidson, 41, a native of Rome, worked as a stringer at the Rome bureau of the Associated Press before coming to the U.S. to attend Harvard as a music major. He went on to receive a doctoral degree in music composition from Columbia University, where he also was instructor and later adjunct professor of music. His compositions were performed in the U.S., Italy, China, and Eastern Europe, and won him numerous grants and awards. He worked as editorial director of Sony Classical before joining Newsday.

Davidson succeeds Peter G. Davis, who left New York magazine earlier this month, on the classical music beat. He is the magazine’s first staff architecture critic since 2004.

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[Press release reprinted verbatim. Congratulations to Justin, a gifted journalist and critic, and a much-admired colleague.]