Martin Goldsmith, author ofInextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany,will be the guest speaker at West Virginia Universitys eighth annual Pi Lambda Phi Jewish Studies lectureship at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28. The public lecture will be held in the Mountainlair Rhododendron Room, with a reception and book signing to follow.

Goldsmith will speak aboutInextinguishable Symphony,which tells the riveting story of the Jewish Kulturbund, an all-Jewish performing arts ensemble maintained by the Nazis during World War II. The Kulturbund was part of the Nazi propaganda effort to depict Jews as thriving under their rule, and its members included Goldsmiths parents, musicians who fell in love and struggled to survive and perform under the most daunting of circumstances.

Goldsmith is currently the director of classical programming at XXM Satellite Radio in Washington, D.C. His recent book,The Beatles Come to America,is part of the Turning Points series published by John Wiley and Sons.

From 1989 to 1999, Goldsmith served as the host of Performance Today, National Public Radio’s daily classical music program, which won the coveted Peabody Award for Broadcasting during his tenure. In September 1998 he received a Cultural Leadership Citation Award from Yale University,in recognition of service to the cultural life of the nation.

Before joining NPR in 1986, Goldsmith worked at member station WETA -FM in Washington, D.C., for a dozen years, serving as a producer, announcer, music director and eventually program director. He began his radio career at the commercial classical radio station WCLV in Cleveland, where his mother was a violist in the Cleveland Orchestra.

A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, he has sung in the chorus of the Baltimore Opera Company and made a guest appearance with the Washington Opera.