Lesley Valdes

Lesley Valdes is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in piano, and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Since taking early retirement as chief music critic of the San Jose Mercury News, the former classical music critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer has been teaching piano in her studio in South Philadelphia as well as poetry and memoir for the Samuel Fleisher Art Memorial. For a decade Valdes was critic-at-large for WRTI, 90.1 FM, Philadelphia’s classical and jazz station. She has broadcast commentaries for National Public Radio’s Performance Today; served as music consultant for the award-winning PBS documentary Wanda Landowska: Uncommon Visionary, and associate producer of Horacio Gutierrez and the Prokofiev Seventh Sonata for PBS affiliate WPBT, Miami, FL. Awards include fellowships from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the Ramon Llull Institute in Barcelona, the New York State Writers’ Institute and the National Arts Journalism Program of the Pew Charitable Trusts. She has written for many national publications including the New York Times, the Wall St. Journal, Symphony and American Poetry Review; poems can be found in the Innisfree Poetry Journal, Shadowgraph, Poetry Ink, the Curator, and Women’s Voices for Change, among others. Her debut chapbook, The Starlight Room (Finishing Line Press, 2025), reflects upon a life in music. She is also volunteer coordinator for the educational Mondiant Initiative which assists Congolese refugees in Rwanda.