A music journalist since 1983, Rick has practiced the trade in close collaboration with music program editors and producers in the United States, where his DW Festival Concerts are regularly broadcast. Rick says, however, that a job like his just doesn't exist over there, which is one reason he has made Germany his second home.

Rick is a regular visitor at Germany's major music festivals, particularly the Bayreuth Festival, and he is addicted to the music of Wagner. But his music interests are inclusive: from Bach to be-bop, Rameau to Rammstein and Gregorian chant to grunge. He likes quoting his idol Leonard Bernstein: "There are only two kinds of music, good and bad."

Because he is surrounded by so much great music in his office, the radio studio, and in Germany's concert halls, Rick finds the sound of silence in his retreat in his Eifel Mountains in Germany's west all the more satisfying.

There, he is currently fixing up an old farm with his partner, maintains a vegetable garden that is much to big, and dotes on his two British longhair cats -- noting with satisfaction that they too seem to enjoy the music of Wagner.