January 2011 Archives

This week's links to NAJP members' work:

Martin Bernheimer on "Knickerbocker Holiday" at Alice Tully Hall (Financial Times)
Laura Collins-Hughes does a Shylock Q&A with Jeffrey Horowitz (The Boston Globe)
Laura Collins-Hughes interviews Garry Hynes and Neil Pepe (The Boston Globe)
Steve Dollar talks with director Aaron Katz about "Cold Weather" (GreenCine Daily)
Steve Dollar on the surprise Oscar nomination for "Dogtooth" (GreenCine.com)
Matthew Gurewitsch on "Nixon in China" (The New York Times)
John Horn on religion in Sundance films (Los Angeles Times)
Julia M. Klein on Nat'l Museum of American Jewish History (The Wall Street Journal)
Julia M. Klein on a biography of Gypsy Rose Lee (AARP.org)
Claude Peck reviews "Tiny Furniture" (Star Tribune, Minneapolis)
Elizabeth Zimmer on the upcoming Dance on Camera Festival (Metro, New York)

Earlier this week, the Washington Post carried two reviews of a concert of contemporary classical music by the Verge Ensemble at the National Gallery of Art in DC. The Post's staff critic, Anne Midgette, was not one of the reviewers, and she took to her blog at midweek with this: 

Due to a clerical error, two critics reviewed the concert for the Washington Post.

One of the premises of this blog is that there are a lot of different ways to look at a concert, and the more voices join in the discussion, the better. So I couldn't pass up the opportunity to post two contrasting reviews of the same event: Charles T. Downey's in the newspaper, and Cecelia Porter's on the blog, after the jump.

These two pieces present two different approaches, even two different ways of writing a view. You be the critic: what are the pros and cons of each? And would anybody like to add his or her own views of what sounds like an intriguing concert?

That was invitation enough for composer Alexandra Gardner who wrote in NewMusicBox:

as a composer, I find reviews like both of these to be wildy frustrating. Who wants to read an adjective-filled rundown of the program? Of course some description is necessary, but when there is no real viewpoint (whatever it may be) offered or commentary on issues such as audience reaction, performer interaction, or how the different compositions did or did not hold up against one another--this program was extremely varied, so did the pieces work together?--the whole endeavor seems futile.

Gardner asserted some factual quibbles, but the main complaint was that the reviews offered little in the way of judgment or insight, and therefore were of little use to readers. The comments after Gardner's complaint were even harsher, and 

One of the surprising positives of having converted the Consumer Guide into the less remunerative but also less laborious Expert Witness blog at MSN Music is the comments. I expected the usual why-don't-you-like-what-I-like drivel, but in fact get almost none of that. Instead I seem to have gathered my fanbase, or part of it, into an online community of music obsessives. I'm getting what I'm told is a lot of comments, many of which I learn from. Many of them are flattering, which is certainly an attraction. But I've had my fill and what I like best now is the learning part--sites I didn't know about, records I didn't know about, detailed insights that enrich and sometimes even change my view of music I already knew about.

There are also occasional comments about music journalism itself, usually more perspicacious than the usual. A few of the commenters write professionally themselves, though seldom full-time. And I was struck by this recent exchange:

NMRIYOTD: The most disheartening thing I do on a weekly basis is read the record reviews in my local papers.  Nary a one ever gives off the impression of having actually LISTENED to the record - of having gotten to know it, thought about it, made sense of it, tried to convey through good writing why the record is good, bad or neither. Many years ago I reviewed the Pogues If I Should Fall From Grace with God for the local alt weekly.  It was a 150 word review and I got pushed by the editor to get it in fast so it looked like we were keeping up on things and weren't reviewing "old" records.  I handed it in and told him I'd managed to listen to it 6 times and came up with a fairly decent appraisal of what I thought of it.  He looked at me and said "6 times??" incredulously.  About 10 minutes later on the subway home I realized he meant "why did you waste your time listening to it so often?".  Ah well..."

stanpnepa: I know someone who reviews about a dozen albums a month for a local paper.  He tells me that he listens to most only ONCE.   I was totally baffled - as it takes me at least three plays to absorb a new album - and if I have a large gap between plays - sometimes more.

Tom Walker: One thing Christgau, and some other music critics, too, have really taught me is to give music some room, give it a chance to grow.  Three plays is about right for me, too, just to get a good sense of what's going on, more if it's lyrics-heavy music. I mean, sometimes once is enough - cut your losses!  But I don't have to write anything.

Do I have to point out how sad this is--how infuriating, how true, how pervasive? I've heard several similar stories recently from people working at or at least for venues more prestigious than the local alt-weekly--yes, there are still a few. Writers' laziness is one thing, though when reviews are paid at 10 bucks a pop I guess there's a kind of justice there. But editors' demands are at least as bad. Crushing out reviews for timeliness's sake is such a trap. Seeing a movie once and writing a brief essay-review about it is possible--I used to do it myself when I was younger. Hearing a record once, especially at a "listening session," or even three-four times over a few hours at home, and writing even 300 words about it is totally foreign to the way people use recorded music--at least people who aren't just trolling MP3 sites the way people used to listen to the radio. Sorry if I've said something similar before. But those unpaid music obsessives raised my outrage level.

This week's links to NAJP members' work:

Charles Aaron on M.I.A. (The Village Voice)
Hilton Als reads and discusses a James McCourt story (The New Yorker)
Alicia Anstead on "Neighbors" and onstage images of black people (WGBH, Boston)
Larry Blumenfeld on bassist William Parker (The Wall Street Journal)
Laura Collins-Hughes on the dangers of aerial performance (The Boston Globe)
Thomas Conner interviews DJ Afrika Bambaataa (Chicago Sun-Times)
Steve Dollar on the films of Sabu (GreenCine Daily)
Steve Dollar on Cinema Purgatorio (The Wall Street Journal)
Michael Feingold remembers Ellen Stewart (The Village Voice)
Michael Feingold on the neglect of Romulus Linney (The Village Voice)
Christopher Hawthorne on Frank Gehry's New World Center (Los Angeles Times)
Christopher Hawthorne announces his Reading L.A. project (Los Angeles Times)
John Horn conducts a roundtable with movie directors (Los Angeles Times)
John Horn on the Golden Globe winners (Los Angeles Times)
Ann Hornaday reviews "Another Year" (The Washington Post)
Ann Hornaday on the Oscars' role in fame-making (The Washington Post)
Hillel Italie interviews memoirist Donald Rumsfeld (The Associated Press)
Julia M. Klein on two immigration novels (Columbia Magazine)
Dennis Lim on new films about Bruce Lee mentor Ip Man (The New York Times)
Karen Michel on photographer-filmmaker-musician John Cohen (NPR)
Anne Midgette on the Kennedy Center's opera takeover (The Washington Post)
John Rockwell on critics and criticism (From the Green Room, Dance/USA)

  Everyone knows that identity runs deep in Brooklyn -- and I confess that one of the reasons I like living there part time is that it reminds me of the willful neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., back in the 1960s and 1970s when I was a kid in Anacostia and Hillcrest. But like all places of identity, you don't really get to claim ownership unless you were born there or somehow got there when the most mythical neighborhood-building activity was going on. By every definition, I'm a latecomer to Brooklyn. I'm a post-hipster, post-hardscrabble, post-we-did-it-our-way interloper.

All of this was reeling in my thoughts when I saw the recent Boston premiere of In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards at ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theater. In the spirit of The Laramie Project and journo-actor-writer Anna Deavere Smith, the Brooklyn-based "investigative theater" group The Civilians conducted interviews, residencies and research around politicians, activists and neighbors involved with the controversial development projects in their beloved community. They developed the script based on those stories. ArtsEmerson provided a residency to the cast last year and, after its Brooklyn premiere, brought it back to Boston -- where similar civic issues such as the Big Dig and Harvard's Allston project have also been contentious -- even as everyone seems to agree that the stunning Paramount renovation has been good for the city and the arts.

The Civilians piece is a primer about Brooklyn's spirit and acreage -- the neighborhoods -- and about the power of The Man. But I found myself distracted by another quality that I've come to associate with documentary theater: righteousness. That's the nature of political theater, of protest theater and (I guess) of investigative theater. It may even be the soul of a community done wrong. In some way that righteousness tells the story better than newspapers, but it rarely makes for a gripping night of theater. (And I've seen the Civilians do gripping.)

More importantly, the show left me wondering: What is the role of narrative in reporting-based theater? And why is theater increasingly taking on the documentary format? Is it our longing to see neighbors, rather than celebrity, depicted onstage? Is life really stranger than fiction?

In the Footprint has a scrappy, gutsy cast digging around at scabs that go beyond building a sports arena. The piece has much to teach us about standing up, acting out, fighting strong, and writer/director Steven Cosson makes sure there's a lot of humor amidst the anger, angling and displacement, particularly in Michael Friedman's original tunes. I wanted more story, but I did get the picture.   

PHOTO: In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards, presented by The Civilians. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

This week's links to NAJP members' work:

Martin Bernheimer reviews the NY Phil playing Thomas Adès (Financial Times)
Martin Bernheimer reviews Renée Fleming at Carnegie Hall (Financial Times)
Robert Christgau's year's-end piece, Dean's List included (Barnes & Noble Review)
Laura Collins-Hughes on race and archetypes in "Neighbors" (The Boston Globe)
Steve Dollar on Golem (Time Out Chicago)
Steve Dollar on the Ecstatic Music Festival (The Wall Street Journal)
Michael Feingold reviews Tennessee Williams' "Green Eyes" (The Village Voice)
Michael Feingold reviews Adam Bock's "A Small Fire" (The Village Voice)
Christopher Hawthorne on a plaza for the Broad museum (Los Angeles Times)
John Horn on the box-office dilemmas of "The Dilemma" (Los Angeles Times)
Marty Hughley's obit for Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Bill Patton (The Oregonian)
Allan M. Jalon looks back at the Otterness Blizzard of '05 (The Huffington Post)
Julia M. Klein on "Rabbit Hole" (Obit Magazine)
Adam Langer reviews Dave Itzkoff's "Cocaine's Son" (The New York Times)
Anne Midgette profiles concert pianist Tzimon Barto (The Washington Post)
Anne Midgette reviews the NSO and Sergey Khachatryan (The Washington Post)
Ann Powers on the evolution of the business of pop music (Los Angeles Times)
Marcia B. Siegel on Alexei Ratmansky's new "Nutcracker" (The Boston Phoenix)
András Szántó on the growth of artist-endowed foundations (The Art Newspaper)
Kristin Tillotson interviews Bette Midler (Star Tribune, Minneapolis)
Douglas Wolk on what makes him happy in comics right now (Techland)

And in print only:

Peter Plagens' column on the custom of guestbooks in galleries (Art in America)

Today the web magazine Edge published the answers to its annual "question of the moment." This year's heady inquiry was: What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? I didn't read all of the 151 responses by some of our biggest brains, but I read many of them and was instantly reminded of a conversation I had last month with the musician Meklit Hadero (pictured here -- photo courtesy of her). 

Hadero and I were preparing for the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference, and I asked her about the new APAP program for artist fellows she was heading. My question was: What can the rest of us learn from artists, particularly in tough economic times?

Her answer could easily have been published in the Edge lineup, but instead it appeared in Inside Arts, the magazine I edit for APAP.

"We conduct so much experimentation in our everyday lives about how to be artists," Hadero said. "You do it creatively. You do it economically. You do it in terms of how you tour and the ensembles you want to play with. And you're always experimenting. Right now, we're in a place where we don't know what's going to happen in the arts, and we don't know how the field is going to change and develop and morph and shift. The thing that's going to get us through and help us adapt the most will be our creativity and our ability to take risks -- which artists are doing all the time. In order to survive, you have to constantly be experimenting, and that's the spirit of openness and willingness -- to embrace the not-knowing, the ability to be flexible and to be responsive creatively to changing circumstances. Artists are great at that."

At the conference, Hadero and I heard many attendees talk about the value of creative thinking -- the type artists and scientists do every day. I suspect arts journalists, particularly those of us who are freelance, have a special insight into this mode of thinking, too. In the process of problem-solving, the best in our fields are fearless about risk, open to discovery and dedicated to finding meaning in unexpected places.

You can read an analysis of the Edge "mini abstracts" in today's Guardian, but you might find stimulating and useful answers if you contact the artists in your community and pose a similar question: What artistic process would improve everybody's toolkit? My guess is that most of the answers will cite risk, discovery, letting go and, yes, embracing the non-knowing.

The topic was critics. It was the end of a long rehearsal, and the drummer who is key to the sound and spirit of Moon Hotel Lounge Project talked about reading a review of a recording he'd done and being completely bewildered -- by the ideas, by the language, by the absence of a cogent argument, all of it. "Nowadays, from reading blogs we sorta expect that the descriptions will be weird and tortured," he lamented, "but this was another level. None of us could comprehend what the dude was getting at. He could have been reviewing spaghetti for all we knew."

This week's links to NAJP members' work:

Charles Aaron on Joell Ortiz's "Free Agent" (Spin)
Martin Bernheimer reviews "La traviata" at the Met (Financial Times)
Martin Bernheimer reviews the NY Phil and Yulianna Avdeeva (Financial Times)
Larry Blumenfeld on the New York Winter Jazzfest (The Wall Street Journal)
Robert Campbell reviews MIT's new Sloan School building (The Boston Globe)
Robert Christgau's Dakar music diary, part two of two (MSN Music)
Laura Collins-Hughes on Buckminster Fuller as theater (The Boston Globe)
Thomas Conner reviews Weezer live (Chicago Sun-Times)
Jeffrey Day on the 2011 Spoleto Festival USA lineup (Free Times, Columbia, S.C.)
Matthew Gurewitsch on the DVD of Theater an der Wien's "Messiah" (Opera News)
Matthew Gurewitsch on the resurrection of Walter Braunfels (The New York Times)
Christopher Hawthorne on the design of the Broad museum (Los Angeles Times)
John Horn on Oscar hopefuls' slow rollouts (Los Angeles Times)
Ann Hornaday on films that follow the contours of real life (The Washington Post)
Hillel Italie on the Newbery and Caldecott medal winners (The Associated Press)
Hillel Italie on censoring Mark Twain (The Associated Press)
Julia M. Klein on the President's House (The Wall Street Journal)
Anne Midgette on a suburban performing arts center boom (The Washington Post)
Anne Midgette on small orchestras (The Washington Post)
Douglas Wolk on Karl Stevens' book, "The Lodger" (Techland)

Briefly, cogently, and as near as I can see undeniably, Salon's Laura Miller dissects the meaning of Jared Loughner's booklist. The essence:

The sole ideological thread running through Loughner's list is an inchoate anti-authoritarianism. It's likely that what attracted him to "Mein Kampf" and "The Communist Manifesto" was less the political thinking in either book than their aura of the forbidden, the sensation that he was defying the adults around him by daring to read either one.

I really want to see how often this analysis is cited, or stolen, or arrived at independently, because it had better be. Miller goes on to observe that Loughner is without question mentally ill--she doesn't use the term "paranoid schizophrenia," which I first saw applied by none other than Rand Paul, and though all such diagnoses have their limitations, that seems a useful catchall to me--and that mental illness knows no political ideology. Also true. But as Miller observes, other political debates around this horror can continue. In addition to the obvious gun control questions, I will be curious to learn with whom Loughner has recently consorted, and whether any of his associates encouraged his fantasies of justice and retribution. But I won't be at all surprised to learn that the answer is no one.

On childhood trips from South Dakota to Minneapolis, I sat in the backseat, steeling myself for my mother's announcement that there was the Foshay Tower, tallest building in the city. She said it on every trip, every time. By age 12, my sarcasm in full flower, I landed hard, as predictable in my objection as she in her cry of recognition.

Whatever was in the Foshay Tower, or what it was for, I never knew, but I was always suspicious of its Frenchified name (why not Fochet?). "Foshay" suggested a futile, embarrassing reach for refinement. Sashay on over to the Foshay! (Sure, you betcha, as soon as my Jell-O sets up.)

This week's links to NAJP members' work:

Martin Bernheimer reviews "Pelléas et Mélisande" at the Met (Financial Times)
Larry Blumenfeld on alto saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr. (The Wall Street Journal)
Robert Campbell reviews MoMA's "Small Scale/Big Change" (The Boston Globe)
Jeanne Carstensen and Reyhan Harmanci on the year in culture (The Bay Citizen)
Robert Christgau on "Coal Miner's Daughter: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn" (NPR)
Robert Christgau's Dakar music diary, part one of two (MSN Music)
Laura Collins-Hughes interviews Liesl Tommy and Lynn Nottage (The Boston Globe)
Arlene Croce on Sergei Diaghilev (The New York Review of Books)
Francis Davis on the Jazz Critics' Poll and winner Jason Moran (The Village Voice)
Steve Dollar interviews Mads Brugger about "The Red Chapel" (GreenCine Daily)
Steve Dollar reviews "Ten Thousand Points of Light" (GreenCine Daily)
Michael Feingold on age, reviewing, and Off-Broadway's past (The Village Voice)
Michael Feingold reviews NYTW's "Three Pianos" (The Village Voice)
Sasha Frere-Jones on Marnie Stern (The New Yorker)
Matthew Gurewitsch on Ethiopian circus juggler Girma Tsehai (Capital New York)
Matthew Gurewitsch on rising soprano Marina Poplavskaya (The New York Times)
Christopher Hawthorne on an architectural game plan for L.A. (Los Angeles Times)
John Horn on the lessons of box-office performance in 2010 (Los Angeles Times)
Ann Hornaday reviews Joel and Ethan Coen's "True Grit" (The Washington Post)
Ann Hornaday on 2010 as a good year for girls in the movies (The Washington Post)
Hillel Italie on some 2010 sleeper books (The Associated Press)
Julia M. Klein on the Barnes Foundation (Obit Magazine)
Renee Montagne interviews cookbook author and actress Madhur Jaffrey (NPR)
Donald Munro on the Fresno arts community in survival mode (The Fresno Bee)
Claude Peck and Rick Nelson on "the year in gay" (Star Tribune, Minneapolis)
Claude Peck reviews Colm Tóibín's "The Empty Family" (Star Tribune, Minneapolis)
Ann Powers profiles Pink (Los Angeles Times)
Ray Rinaldi on Teena Marie as a woman in control (The Denver Post)
Ray Rinaldi on the year in Denver architecture (The Denver Post)
John Rockwell on the evolution of James Levine (The New York Times)
Craig Seligman reviews "As Always, Julia" (Bloomberg News)
Douglas Wolk on the joys of comics in 2010 (Techland)
Douglas Wolk makes some comics-related New Year's resolutions (Techland)

1. A bunch of critics touting criticism. Quelle surprise. Conspicuous by their absence were novelists, short-story writers, poets, and most of all, plain ol' book-buying readers saying how much they needed it and begging critics to stick with it. The whole ensemble seemed to me like Sports Illustrated running a suite of short essays on the need for sportswriting.

2. Not exactly a great range in race, age, class and, at least to a non-specialist in literature like me, set of touchstones.

3. Nothing much critical, especially of other critics. (Or are literary critics an all-for-one, one-for-all band of musketeers fighting off--not to put too fine a point on it--amateurs who blog?) The tone was pretty much commencement-address, and kind of a snore, really.