Piotr Orlov

Piotr Orlov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia back when it was still called Leningrad, and arrived in NYC in the late 1970s. Though he is first and foremost a writer-editor, over the past 25 years Piotr has worked as a music storyteller in many capacities at various platforms and institutions. His writing has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Pitchfork, The Guardian, and ArtForum, among many others. (It still occasionally does.) Piotr has spent time as director of special projects at AFROPUNK, a senior editor of content at NPR Music, and as editorial director at MTV, where in 2006 he helped launch one of the world’s first programmed streaming music services. In 2003, he co-curated the music program of The New Museum art exhibition, “Black President: The Art & Legacy of Fela Kuti.” While at the marketing and advertising agency Mother New York, he helped produce the globally successful branded content event programs, “Creators Project” (for Intel/Vice) and “Red Bull Music Academy”; and in 2013 he helped produce the Red Bull Music Academy in New York. In 2019, Piotr co-created the 13-part radio program “City.FM” for New York public radio (funded by the Mayor’s Office for Media and Entertainment) about the city's local music culture; and in 2021-22 he wrote and produced the monthly interview+music program, Dada Strain Radio (for the Sonos Radio Network), focused on rhythm, improvisation and community. Currently, Dada Strain is also a Substack newsletter. Additionally, Piotr is an adjunct professor of writing at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. Feel free to call him “Peter.”