From Sky news this is connections.

I'm Patrick Hoskin.

And our connection this hour on this Arts Friday edition of the show was made in July, when an internal memo at The New York Times revealed that four of its arts critics would be reassigned to new roles.

That includes TV critic Margaret Lyons, theater critic Jessie Green, classical music critic Zachary Wolf, and longtime chief pop music critic John Prentice, who had been in that role since 1988.

So the company is not killing those jobs.

And in fact, there are several other critics who are remaining in their roles.

But The Times is now actively searching for new hires who are fluent in, quote, new story forms, videos and experimentation with other platforms.

That's according to a memo, and the times is looking for types of coverage that go beyond the traditional review.

So this kind of shakeup is not unheard of in the modern media landscape.

Multi-platform storytelling is the name of the game.

And that even extends, apparently, to criticism.

But what does it say about the health of legacy media or arts criticism when the paper of record makes a change like this?

The language of the memo prompted the worker owned publication Hellgate NYC to ask in a headline, does the NYT want culture writing or TikTok videos?

That question could be extended to all of media in an age when information travels faster than ever before.

And competition for audience attention is cutthroat.

So what is the role of the arts critic in this kind of ecosystem?

And what does the future of arts criticism look like given these changes?

Well, we are joined by some folks who can hopefully help answer these questions and unpack them.

First and foremost, Mona, sacred tool salami is here.

Hey, Mona.

Hello.

Hello.

Good to be joining you.

Mona is no stranger to these airwaves.

Of course.

Or this this particular program.

She's the classical music director, host and producer.

Also someone who contributes regularly to City Magazine and sits in this seat regularly.

We're joined by Eric Grody, longtime theater critic and reporter and associate professor at Syracuse University's Newhouse School and former director of the Gold Ring Arts style and culture journalism program at that school.

So welcome.

Thanks for having us.

Welcome back.

I should say thank you.

And my colleague at city Magazine, Catherine Varga, is here.

Catherine is City's theater critic and also an arts educator.

So, Catherine, thanks a lot for being here.

Thanks for having me.

So, yeah, like I said, the three people in this room with me who care very deeply about the arts, three people who contend with the place of the arts in our lives, who practice criticism, who are very familiar with these questions and have a lot of maybe questions of their own.

Maybe we'll just start.

So I think for folks in our field and folks who care about the arts and who, you know, kind of, are into this discipline.

What did you make of this news about the New York Times critics being, reassigned when you heard that?

Is it is it a big deal?

Is it the death of arts criticism, as perhaps been suggested, or is it like a necessary sign of the times mode on what do you think?

I wanted to start with Monica, as Mona and I were having a great conversation about this right before we started.

Well, I guess I was mostly surprised when they said they wanted new forms.

Each of these journalists, I think, would be equipped to tell stories in new forms.

And in fact, Zachary Wolfe, who I know primarily through the classical music world, is the person who created those features.

You may have seen in The New York Times that I love, that are very sort of popularizing five Minutes to Make you love Mozart, five minutes make you love opera.

He can turn from writing a serious article about what is going on at this institution.

What does this performance mean?

And then to say, well, now you're on the obituaries desk.

It's sort of not a inviting him to do new forms, I guess.

So that to me was a real surprise.

And also then did get me thinking about how do I value criticism versus previews versus profiles versus news versus music listings, which I'm sure we'll talk about a bit too.

Definitely.

Yeah, there's in those all those particular forms, I think are addressed in a piece that we can bring up a little later.

Catherine, any thoughts to add?

I mean, as a theater critic, is there to hear that a theater critic at the paper of record is not going to be in that role anymore?

Yeah, I was unsettled, and I was surprised because, to be honest, Jesse Greene's not my favorite theater critic.

I often get very frustrated reading his reviews, but I still like living in the media landscape where he has a job where there is a position for a full time theater critic.

So I was quite unsettled by the shake up.

Yeah, that's kind of the thing, right?

Like you as a as a both a reader and certainly on the artist perspective.

Like it's very a part of the equation can be having these relationships with the critics and sometimes they're contentious, even though they may not know you personally, but you may have this contentious relationship with their relationship with the work or the way that they reflect the work.

Which is which all feels very personal, which I think is a big part of it, too.

Eric, I mean, you as a theater critic, as someone who just finished running a a master's program for, ostensibly arts journalism and potential future critics for ten years.

I mean, what do you make of that?

Is it something that comes up in the curriculum, too?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, and I used the I heard Mona say, surprised.

I heard Catherine say unsettled.

I guess I would describe myself as as shocked, but not surprised.

You know, I it was jarring to see that.

And I say, this is someone I mean, Jesse actually helped me get my first book deal with something that came through Jesse and I. I've known Zach for a while.

You know, I these are these are people who I agree with Mona, who are extremely capable of taking on the new task as it appears to be defined.

But I guess I would push back a little bit on this idea that that criticism, whoever's going to be in those four jobs will still be a full fledged critic.

They just might not be a critic whose job 40 hours a week is to type words in a row that then get put on the website or the newspaper, and it's telling that I put it in that order.

You know, they're just they're still going to be thinking a lot about the culture.

They're still going to be putting those thoughts into words, and then those words in some format are going to be put out under the New York Times banner.

And so that's still a good thing.

And did you find like is are there is that.

I mean so, so you took over the program in 2015.

And so from the past ten years just thinking about the media changes also in the landscape is your is your schooling.

These students for to enter a professional media landscape that keeps changing where it is becoming multi-platform by the day.

Is that I guess, how did that kind of, come up in the curriculum?

And I know part of that is not you yourself, but also getting the right people in the room to talk about that.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, absolutely, the curriculum had changed in the ten years before I came on as director and very much changed during the ten years, and a lot of that was for me at least.

You know, knowing what I know and what I don't know, and finding people who can actually augment, and supplement.

So, of course, I mean, every one of these students who typically are digital natives, who come in with much higher baseline knowledge than I do on day one, I don't have much to teach them in terms of the craft of the multi-platform stuff.

It's just how to channel your knowledge and expertise and in into that form.

So they've led us to a certain degree, but we've brought in I'm fortunate to teach at a school at Syracuse that has a really robust faculty and a lot of people with a lot of different areas of expertise and so I feel like the students are actually pretty well covered, should they choose to be.

A lot of it comes in electives, not required classes, but they can come out of there pretty well versed in this stuff.

And we certainly encourage them to do that.

I just have a thought.

Just considering the idea of getting formal training in this, because I have to say, although I have training in music and I have a library degree and I've been on the air a lot, my training as a critic, besides taking the class and writing program notes and generally for music about general audiences, was.

And I lived in Charleston, West Virginia.

I picked up a side gig writing reviews for $35, a review on a 1 or 2 hour deadline for the Charleston Gazette.

And this older reporter, Bob Schwartz.

Schwartz here says on the phone.

And he says, well, I want you to know is I just want to know whether or not you liked it in the first few sentences.

And I got to write my first review about hip hop dance, a group called IL Style and Piece, something I felt highly unqualified to write about.

But it was it was just so it's sort of interesting because they were just kind of like, go and, you know, you evolve ideas because actually opposite of what that first training was, is that since then, I feel I've evolved that idea.

As someone once said, I'm more talk about what to pay attention to than what I like.

So which is completely opposite.

And then he's like, look, I've got to know whether or not you liked it, whether it was good or bad.

Start there.

But there's so much more to it.

So yeah, that's like I feel like that kind of gets into something.

Maybe we should establish here near the beginning of the show, which is like, what is the role of the arts critic?

Right.

And is is that different now than it was 3 to 5 years ago, 25 years ago?

And I assume the answer is yes, but I guess, broadly speaking, so so, Mona, you see it more, you see it less as, a, a sort of, binary, like, it didn't like it consumer, thing and more of an exploration kind of thing.

Yeah.

Which also is perhaps different than I think as I read older historical things.

It's not whether or not that critics likes it, it's whether or not it is good.

Forget, you know, they are in a way, you know, that voice of God thing, right?

Like not I feel this way.

The world should feel this way, you know, so and then so then I guess I'm going even beyond my perspective.

But like Catherine mentioned, liking or disliking a critic that's, you know, like, I can think of like Ebert, like this or didn't I kind of know where its sympathies lie with movies or, you know, other things like that.

So I guess I'm getting into a lot of different ideas.

There's the established voice that you get to know that person is a person, is it not?

Is it about me, the writer?

Is it about you, the reader, or where does that intersect.

Yeah.

Where you say, well I've heard Jesse Green describe the importance of a critic's taste being consistent.

So then people know okay.

Do I generally agree.

Do I generally disagree.

That's more important than some arbiter of like is this good or is this bad.

For me I think of criticism as an important way for audiences to get information about a piece of art or a media that's not coming from the people trying to sell it to them.

It's a more neutral way to get a sense of what a show is doing from the perspective of an outsider who's not directly involved in that show.

Yeah, context is a big part of it, right on.

And to the to the question of taste, I mean, one of the very first assignments I would give my students is they, Patrick Patrick, if we didn't mention Patrick, the former.

Yeah.

I just was that to.

Yeah.

So Patrick did it started late Stacy Patrick's boss.

But, you know, I say they have to go find a piece of writing a review, and it had to meet two criteria.

One, they had to think it was a very well, it's something was presumably if something they'd seen or listened to or whatever.

And they had to I think it was a really well-written, cogent good review, and b it had to have the complete opposite opinion of the piece than they themselves had.

So, you know, go and find a pan of something they loved or vice versa.

And one of the students in your cohort I remember love and she like, took to her, but she called her mom.

She was so upset about this review that hated The Fifth Element, which she loved.

The Fifth Element.

But it got to the core of like, okay, so if typically what you think of, oh, I like that review, which usually just like they said, what I would have said just with maybe with bigger words or whatever, like, no, they're coming at it from their, their have a completely different set of litmus tests or whatever criteria they're looking at, but it still succeeds on some level, even though they got it wrong.

And there's some element to, to the point of consistency that you brought up.

Kathryn.

There's almost like, you get to know her critics taste, you get to know maybe what you may come to expect and then to see them deviate from that, or what you thought they were going to do was, like, genuinely thrilling to me.

Like when you get your critics who you're like, man, I can't wait to read this person's take on this.

They're going to hate it.

And then it's like they loved it.

That's totally inconsistent with what I thought they were going to do because as my relationship with them.

So that's kind of cool to like that.

That creates like a third or I don't know how many number of dialogs or like avenues to engage with the are, but it creates another way of engaging with the art that I think is really exciting.

It's like a heel turn.

Yeah, that's right.

It's like with John Cena or or whatever.

All of a sudden that comes out and it's like Robert, Chris Gal suddenly liking some prog rock or something.

There you go.

Right?

And softening their long held positions of being anti something.

Yeah.

And I think like I guess have the, as, as critics and as folks who are invested in that conversation.

Have you seen anyone seen the role changed dramatically recently, or I guess I should say, the expectations of the role, and maybe that is the way that it's seen or the way it's expected to be seen, or like, why do people come to critics?

I mean, is it just other critics?

Is it people who develop these relationships from a as we're kind of saying, more of a consumer, you know, avatar perspective?

As Richard Brody says in his piece?

I don't know.

Is that different now?

Are the expectations of it different now that can be seen?

Let's say, in music, I can easily stream something and sample it.

So I don't have to necessarily read what you say before I go by the record.

You know, I can just be like, well, why don't I just go preview it on Spotify?

Why do I have to hear what you think is one sort of difference in music criticism?

But then again, there's also so much information out there.

I think it's probably different for live performances, for theater, for other experiences.

Yeah.

Something that I've seen within the realm of theater is critics who are coming from underrepresented groups, kind of speaking truth to power and the reviews and occasionally that can put pressure on productions to perhaps do better.

I'm thinking about how Christian Lewis wrote a review criticizing Jagged Little Pill for having a non-binary character not played by an on by actor, and while they didn't change that for the Broadway production, my understanding is that the tour production there was more of a, effort to cast that role appropriately.

So criticism as a way of actually impacting and changing and pushing productions to be more thoughtful and, inclusive and the work they're doing, and yeah, criticism as activism, perhaps a little bit in that way, too.

Yeah.

And a lot of this, I mean, a lot of this comes down to who you're writing for, who your imagined or real audience is.

I mean, you don't see this in theater as much, but I know in film, I've always been amazed when I see people walk out of a movie theater and some not all, but some movie theaters will have like a large blown up thing of the review that's out on like poster board and people will walk out of the movie they have just seen to then stop and like read that review.

So obviously for them it's not playing the role of like, oh, is this worth my time?

Should I go see this?

They already saw it.

So it's not necessarily is like the consumer guide of like this is worth your time.

This isn't also like in classical music and theater.

If the if you don't live in New York City, you're stuff is being read by people who have no intention of actually getting to that show.

TV and film is a little bit different because it's always an option, but these finite, you know, a review of a one night concert, no one's going back to that concert.

It's just a question of like experiencing it and having some sense of what happened.

Yeah, there's so much going on in the world that I don't get to, but I kind of know, like, oh, this person's doing this now or start to form my own opinions, even though I wasn't at that show, I feel like Alex Ross.

And then although it did transfer to recordings, Alex Ross in The New Yorker has reviews of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing performances by French string quartets, things that may eventually tour here to Rochester.

But I didn't get to see like that sort of helped shaped my interests and where I went and looked for things.

Yeah, yeah.

To get here earlier point I always after I see a movie, if it's like really impacted me or I'm trying to unpack what the movie was doing, I usually go home and I read as better reviews as I can, because that helps me think more about what I just saw.

And that's something that I hope, I do that also at theater Reviews.

It's such a treat to be able to see a Broadway show and then be able to read the reviews.

Often it's the other way around.

I'm just reading the Broadway reviews, trying to get a sense of what's happening, and, well, that's with movies or with theater and somebody especially theater, because I know less.

There might be some historical context.

I may have just seen something.

I thought that was a neat scene, but you may say, oh, that was clearly a reference to this earlier theater writer, because I've been to more theater than you have.

So, you know, you're educating me on the language of that art, the references, the signifying, what's happening.

And I think that gets to pretty close to the core of this talk.

Anytime there's like a big changing of the guard and there's, you know, voices that have been around longer and have seen more stuff or listened to more stuff.

So they have that context and they have those frames of reference.

But they maybe don't or perceive not to have, you know, their finger on the pulse of what the kids are listening to or, you know, and so there's often this trade off of, of is it worth jettisoning at least some of the former to get more of the latter?

And that's a very moving target, something that I find interesting about sort of the state of criticism is just the existence of Letterboxd, because Letterboxd is a very, very, very popular now, and even more so now that they're sort of a content creator as well.

Film platform, an app where it's, you know, user, user, reviews power the content of the site.

So you watch a movie, you log it, you, you review it in, in as many words or as few or as quippy as you want to do.

On the platform, you can you can rate it out of five stars.

And so what I love to do is watch a movie and then go on letterbox.

And I usually try to I keep it more as like a log of movies.

I've seen more than like a sort of a, I don't know, like a taste portfolio or something.

But I love to scroll through have having just seen a movie and see how both seriously, some people take the act of reviewing that film, and how some people are just trying to fire off a bang or tweet.

Basically, yeah.

Which and both I like to me, both of them are are both valid forms of criticism of arts criticism.

And it's actually great to see them mingle with each other in this context.

And sometimes if it's a movie that I love, I will you because you can sort by you.

Basically, you hate read as I do, and you can sort by like, okay, who are the people that really hated this movie and what are they saying about it?

And then I'll go through and kind of inhale like 20 of those because I'm a sicko.

And then I'll be like, yeah, well actually I see some of those points.

I completely disagree with that.

But man, I feel very empowered now because I just got the full spectrum of all this stuff.

So in that way I'm like, I kind of feel like it's keeping criticism, especially for film, not afloat necessarily, but I find that it's very it's very much keeping it's it's keeping people engaged and it's keeping film watching and interacting like very active, you know.

So I don't know, I on Letterboxd.

No, but I do story graph, which is like the book equivalent, I guess.

Okay.

Right.

Yeah.

Which is kind of like a Goodreads sort of.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

These where you can kind of gamify it a little bit, you know, it's, it becomes I dunno, it adds a, I think that there are people who would probably say that because that's a, that's let's be clear, that's a very different thing than the traditional long form review as we're sort of know it, but it's also a way of keeping, you know, film criticism alive and stuff.

So yeah, and creating a sense of community around.

That's the other thing.

Having seen a movie you saw in your small theater with the people around you, now you can broaden that perspective on what others thought or in this day and age, best case scenario, you saw it in that small theater with people around you very likely to have watched it at home or even on your phone.

So, I mean, you're as as as the act of going to culture becomes more and more atomized, like, I think having these public squares becomes that much more important.

So as critics do you I so you nodded there.

So you're on letter.

So do I lurk on letter.

Okay.

I was going to say because you're not you're not giving it away for free, right.

Yeah.

But I do see some people do that.

I mean, some film critics will get like, David Erlich at IndieWire is a big one.

He will start his published review on on Letterboxd and then be like, click here if you want to read the rest of it, which I think is a great strategy.

So maybe that and I guess I sort of bring that up to say there's some more language from the New York Times memo is sort of relating to these changes.

As reported by variety and some other outlets.

But, the language of the memo sort of announcing these critic reassignments, was we're in the midst of an extraordinary moment in American culture.

New generations of artists and audiences have are bypassing traditional institutions.

Smartphones have balkanized fandoms, even as they have made culture more widely accessible than ever.

And arts institutions are facing challenges and looking for new opportunities.

So, I mean, all of that true.

One way of, I guess, of thinking about what it is to engage with even those fandoms is, thinking about Letterboxd, I think as one possible example.

So but I'm also like even The New Yorker does this version of this where, you know, Richard Brody and Kang Justin Chang will all sit down?

Their critics will sit down.

Two camera shoot interviews, just talking about the stuff that they're watching.

And, you know, it's it's high production value.

They're not doing it in their car the way that you might see some other videos online.

But these are, these are tools that critics are using now.

So yeah, there's a little bit of, I guess the like just industrywide.

These are very common practices for arts critics at this point.

Right.

And so I think like there's two I guess to your point, Eric the shocked but or not shocked, but or surprised, like there's, there's a certain element of getting with the times, you know, already this, this type of technology being multi-platform and finding people is, is kind of already happening.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, I one of the classes I teach is I teach, you know, writing for both, budding print journalists or what we used to call print journalists and broadcast journalists and, you know, and the scripts are different.

If if Patrick were to take something he had written at city and read it on the air, it would not sound right.

Same with taking your script that you're doing here and like printing that out like it's two very different voices.

You can we're on the air right now.

No one is going to rewind us a little bit to hear that sentence a second time.

They could presumably, but they're not going to where as you do that.

I mean, it's just the eye on the ear process.

Words differently.

And so it's a different discourse.

And it's easy for people like me from the print, where the words typically have an extra syllable or two to hold that at a different stratum or level.

And it's silly, like, it's not.

It's all it's all how you think about this stuff.

But it is different and it is important to be able to think about it as all of those are venues that you need to make sure you're reaching your audience.

Yeah, because audience is a question to that.

I want to talk about the book, but also I want to say we've taken some of our print city reviews and turned them into radio pieces.

And we've sort of learned to this thing that we know that you tell the story a little differently.

You illustrate things I love, you hear our music reviews on Fresh Air on, public radio.

And they can sort of, you know, illustrate things.

And there's a different approach to it, for sure.

But yeah, the audience is, I mean, in some ways, we both our audience and creator, because I think a lot of musicians like reading about it.

Some people who have become artists in these fields say they found their first love through reading about this far off world.

Right.

You're a kid in suburban new Jersey, you say, reading about the theater world of New York City.

And, you know, someday you go there, but you experience it in this completely remote world, like, you know, this way through that.

But for other people, I don't know.

So in other ways.

So I can't speak to a typical audience perspective because I'm in the midst of it so far.

Well, and I was curious from your perspective, Catherine, like, are you you know, let's say you're writing about the new show at Blackfriars or you're reviewing the, Rochester Community Players Shakespeare and Highland Bowl, which we just did.

If you can read it on Rock city mag.com.

As you can read a lot of Kathryn's other work.

Are you how much are you thinking about audience when you're crafting those reviews?

And I guess, what are you thinking about in terms of audience for, for reviewing a local production like that?

Oh, well, I think my role as a critic is to help people find the show that they're most going to enjoy.

So I try to write in a way that an audience that's trying to get a sense of whether or not they want to go see the show will see if it's going to be worth their their time, their effort.

I'm also very aware that because Rochester's a small city, probably the people involved in the production will have access to that review.

So in the back of my head, I'm sometimes just having that context.

This is useful thinking about, wanting to have a generosity for the work that's being done and uplift more than tear it down as much as I can.

Yeah.

So is that something that resonates with Eric and Mona?

Is that that idea of generosity?

I've reviewed community theater.

I've reviewed kids theater in Charleston, West Virginia.

And I'm not going to tell you that your eight year old is a terrible actor.

Like that is not my role.

Obviously.

They just want some sort of record.

This happened.

This is what it's about.

You know what?

You know.

So that's like certainly I one show, I just sort of ran out of space or time and I didn't say anything bad or good about anyone.

I just didn't mention someone's part.

And they personally wrote me to say, like, why didn't you mention me?

Did I do so terribly?

I'm just a retired doctor trying to act like I it came with us.

But, you know, like, if I'm.

I trash cats.

Though Andrew Lloyd Webber doesn't live next door to me and I don't have to face him at Wegmans.

So, you know, that's true.

That's punching up.

But a very big.

Yeah.

I mean, and punching up is I mean, I do I don't do it as much now, but you know, grading on a curve essentially because, you know, if the typical audience is coming in to see a free thing, a theater, or see their kids in a show, like they're coming in with a different set of expectations and someone who's paid a I'm Kevin Garnett, it's 60 or $70 now for g g for tickets, or retail can be even more than that.

And so, you know, if people are not, the money dictates all of this.

But I mean, it does bring in a certain set of expectations.

And they have every right to have those expectations.

And so you're kind of meeting the show where it is.

And it doesn't mean like patting the some people on the head for remembering most of their lines or what.

I mean, they're still our standards and I still have to meet those standards, but I've done the Moana thing and just sort of forgotten to mention someone that I thought it was kind to not mention.

Yeah, that's my worst nightmare.

Having somebody personally feel offended by that.

And, yeah, I, I also thinking about the production and the artists who are in the room putting it on, but also thinking about the actual story that's being told.

I often try to question, why are we doing this play now in Rochester?

What are some of the messages that are being are being conveyed through this particular choice?

And what is the larger social political context that this work is being done in?

So again, just kind of giving that that context and that's not saying yay or nay on this eight year old, but more like, what is it that these children like?

What is the story of these children are telling?

And or this generic production of diva?

Yeah.

Like why why are we putting certain narratives on stage?

Yeah, and that's a big part of it too, right?

It's.

And I think it's so funny to think about the reviewing children's theater because it looks like it almost like it, it there's no there's no presumption that you're going to go out of that with as a critic saying like, definitely thumbs down, like because also it's and it's like not as interesting if that's what your goal is.

It's more interesting to talk about what you what was the experience like?

What did it remind you of?

What where did it take your mind?

You know, and I think that that's that's actually something that, that Richard Brody gets into in this piece.

And Moana and I were also speaking about for this is Richard Brody, the long time film critic at The New Yorker, wrote a piece after this news came out about, sort of a defense of the traditional review.

And, he, he kind of lays out like what that is and what it's not, and even sort of, kind of goes to bat for different forms of, of writing like a festival roundups, music roundups.

Those are criticism.

He even makes the case that, like a profile, a reporter profile can be like backdoor criticism, which I think is really interesting too.

So yeah, and the article that I've been pairing it with is an Atlantic article by a composer, pianist, Gabriel Kane, who, calls his article a love letter to music listings.

But he really does get a little bit into criticism to talks about moving to New York City and time out in New York.

And actually, another great critic that I love, Steve Smith, who now has a Substack Night After night, which kind of summarizes the sense.

And he still does listings of concerts in New York, along with reviews and other things that Kane then sort of laments that even though he does it both as an artist promoting himself, and to read this fragmented world of Instagram that do you catch this thing or not?

Versus sort of this introduction to, I guess, as I love Alex Ross's book title.

Listen to this, listen to this here.

Come on in.

Right.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah, I have definitely there have been shows that just weren't on my radar.

Was then based on the marketing, didn't think I would like.

And then I see a review or a, description from a critic I respect and it changes my interest in that maybe motivates me to go see something that I wouldn't have otherwise cared about.

So we're talking about the state of arts criticism here on connections.

Motorcycle salami is here.

Catherine Varga and Eric Brody, we are going to talk more about this.

We're going to take a phone call right after we take our only break of the hour.

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Welcome back to connections here on WXXI.

We have been talking about the state of arts criticism with Eric Brody, Catherine Varga, motorcycle Sammy.

It's also here.

We do have a caller, Phil from Brighton.

Thanks for calling in.

Phil.

What, what do you have to say on the state of arts criticism here in Rochester?

Well, this is a very theoretical, discussion because there really isn't any there's no outlet for criticism in town.

City newspaper, in its new incarnation, doesn't doesn't publish any.

I understand it's a monthly rather than a weekly, which is a problem, but the newspaper doesn't.

And, you know, is, our music director, announced that the last concert of the year, he just said the media in Rochester ignore the symphony.

And the best, to my knowledge, they ignore Cheever and any of the other arts happening in town.

And this, I think, is, a big loss for the town and many cities where the newspapers have cut back on critics.

Kind of arts criticism websites have popped up in New York City, where the times has cut back severely in terms of music criticism.

There is, I think it's called New York Classical Review, but there's nothing in Rochester.

And I don't understand this conversation because this is all very theoretical.

You know, reading The New Yorker reviews is great, but there is no outlet for, Rochester.

So I guess I'd like your comments on that.

Yeah, I appreciate the call.

So so, Mona, I think has something to say here.

I just wanted to say also upfront, I do, I think by and large publications, have, you know, scaled back critics.

I think that's definitely true.

We are joined by, two of the folks who do put criticism in city mag in this room, too.

So I just want to shout out, Catherine, a lot of Catherine's reviews end up going online.

That's a virtue of, as as Phil pointed out, the fact that city is a monthly.

So, you know, just in terms of turnaround, you know, especially giving the value to the people about a show that might only be open for a weekend.

That's part of the reason why what Catherine does and, you know, the quick turnaround too, which is a great a great credit to you.

Mona does a lot of city, music criticism in city as well.

But I think as music director, you might have some thoughts on this.

Yeah.

I was just going to first speak up for city that there are four published music reviews a month, online and in print.

And I read Catherine's theater reviews, actually, because I although I try and keep track of everything, I'm not as connected.

And so I read about the Shakespeare in the Park.

I read about plays a diva at Blackfriars, some that I get to, some I don't.

So that's there.

But you do have to be online because of the timeliness of the theater reviews.

And then I'd say in terms of coverage, this gets back to the music listings, perhaps as a sort of former credits, and we just got it's not big reviews, you know, analyzing the clarinet solo and all of that, but one besides broadcasting the RPO concerts on classical, we do arts listings every day.

And we just got a lovely email from a listener who said three things he did in the last week he wouldn't have done if he hadn't been listening to our station.

And sort of that's the same role as the daily to do in the city magazine calendar.

It is fragmented and it's been harder, I think, to reconnect with sources of information, especially post-pandemic.

But I do think we're really committed to that because someone said they learned about a water Lotus festival and they said that the people there said no one's really covering it as much.

But our listener heard us talk about it, went her Chinese music.

He heard saw the Met Opera at the movies, and he saw Geneva Light Opera, production of Falstaff, which perhaps you wouldn't have learned about somewhere else.

So I guess I'm going to say that we're we're definitely trying.

But it is, again, hard.

Perhaps you missed me announcing that that one point.

Should I be doing a sit down with Patrick every week and talking about my favorite arts events?

This weekend?

I maybe sat and with Brenda Tremblay in with Steve, who puts together Arts Calendar, but I guess especially the interview artists who've been part of the RPO we've covered, you know, the opera, there's a lot going on, which is great.

Rochester's a very, very rich arts community.

And there are, as we even expand, which is good.

What we talk about in the arts.

Right.

The art of, you know, you could both talk about the big symphony concert and the gala play or the community theater production that's really popping up, or an interesting art opening.

There's so much so what rises to the top and how dance is something that I don't know as much about, but I've read more coverage of In City recently actually.

Yeah.

So I, I'm on the inside, so I'm a little biased.

I'll put.

But I really think this is I believe that is so important, those things that the arts organizations and audiences are concerned about.

And I just want to find the way.

Yeah, I think I would say one thing I do at the beginning of every single month now is I pick up city and I start folding dog the pages and marking in my calendar for, I don't know, 11 or 12 things over the month.

That's in the middle of the issue is the, you know, it's essentially in arts listings.

It's art.

Now, how do I get to all 11 or 12 of those?

No, probably not.

But I mean, I, you know, I that's one of the ways that I absolutely try to flag.

So I, I feel like city's way out in front, as in as much as a monthly can be, that does have to take good work like Katherine's and make it accessible online.

And then we do have people if you're maybe this is again the fragmentation is that if you follow Greg Bell at Jazz Rochester, he has an all jazz calendar.

And that is an online thing with an email and listing.

And he really gets in there from every like jazz by and playing at a wine bar to major concerts like Branford Marsalis.

And I think to that point that that was brings up something I was going to mention to Mona is, sort of the specialization, of a lot of the arts coverage and certainly arts criticism.

It's happening.

Yeah.

The Jazz Rochester is a great website.

I think, we actually, I believe city actually, did a piece on, him last year just to talk about what that work, actually.

And, what that work requires to really maintain like the sort of up to date, jazz pulse of the city.

But just in terms of critics not being necessarily at the legacy media publications anymore, being on staff, you know, you mentioned Steve Smith and his Substack is, that he runs is essentially where we started to have the conversation about what this, this, addition of, this, this conversation here on connections could be like, so a lot of critics go to, you know, starting their own Substack and they become more individualized, specialized voices, which, you know, certainly is a fragmentation.

It's not as central as, you know, going to one, one place and kind of being the case.

But I think like, that's just sort of a that is a reflection of the, I think the state of media and sort of the, you know, it kind of presents a lot of different avenues for people to, create that themselves and to kind of start those conversations themselves on Substack.

But also, you know, it's they're making it work for themselves to still be right, but it becomes harder to I saw someone tweet once, like, it would be great if all these really talented writers who have their own Substack could all be published in one place.

I don't know what you would call that though.

Maybe a magazine, you know?

So it's kind of the, the larger media trends are, you know, and we have a and a loss from some of the fragmentation because when it used to only be one critic or one outlet or 1 or 2, you lost a lot of voices or, you know, you have fringes of fringes where people were doing interesting work, but it wasn't reaching more attention.

So that's perhaps a lot of this is valorized.

I don't know if it's like 70s, 80s downtown New York, where people were reviewing things at the Metropolitan Opera next to like, John Zorn and like, you know, really unusual sort of out there stuff side by side.

Now it's all out there.

But how do you find the center?

So yeah, there's I mentioned this piece before, the break, Richard Brody, the longtime New Yorker film critic, wrote this piece in The New Yorker, called In Defense of the Traditional Review, partly in response to the New York Times critic reassignment.

I just want to read a part of it, and we can sort of bring this up and sort of go into a lot of different directions with it.

But, so this is he wrote in the piece, I'm not spreading my arms out in front of traditional reviews to protect them from insult or attack.

Rather, I'm advocating for them not in order to preserve the status quo or revive past practices, but to advance the cause of art itself.

Because review's far from being conservative, as the New York Times memo implies, they are the most inherently progressive mode of arts writing.

When writing reviews, critics are in the position of the public, which we talked about before watching a movie, attending a concert, seeing a play, buying a record.

Reviews are rooted in the most fundamental unit of the art business, which is the personal encounter with individual works and in the economic implications of that encounter.

The specificity of the review is both esthetic and social.

Critics are simultaneously consumers and avatars of consumers.

And then he quotes Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker in 1971, saying, without a few independent critics, there's nothing between the public and advertisers.

So the independence, I think, is another big part of this, too.

I think that that came up earlier in our thing.

Any general thoughts on that and kind of that relationship?

Catherine, anything?

Yeah.

Well, something more broadly speaking about like writing in general that terrifies me is the normalization of using AI to generate text.

And I feel like reviews are one of those things that it's more obvious or more like hollow to try to write.

Like, how can I predict a review of what is a very personal experience going to a concert, going to a movie?

So that's in one regard where I feel like hopefully that type of writing is, needs to be protected and, supported in order to keep that conversation.

Definitely.

Even as the long form criticism is, being trained is being used to train the, the generative models.

But that's a different conversation.

But anyway, yeah, I don't know that that sort of came up.

I think the independence part came up earlier, didn't it?

Yeah.

Well, and it's weird because I think of myself as in a weird position in terms of independence, because I also book bands.

So, you know, I am in all parts of the and maybe all of us live in these different ways.

And I think each of these publications often have sort of standards.

New York Times specifically, I think talks about like doesn't serve on boards, wouldn't serve on panels or on other things, but in other ways we consider our embeddedness in the community of value.

That's how we can tell you why a story matters or pick up on that actor.

Doing that means something special because of their past.

Again, that sort of longitudinal look at what's going on.

How many can can I ask another from your from your standpoint, Erica, of being a former director of this, arts journalism program, where there are a lot of students that would come in asking, I want to learn or sort of with the goal of learning how to do, like, you know, traditional reviews as kind of we we're talking about them and what that definition is.

Yeah.

I mean, I think I mean, Syracuse and Newhouse is a very legacy place.

It's three big buildings have the First Amendment plastered on one side.

I mean, it does it definitely does signal this is this is a place that's been doing what it's been doing for a long time.

And so, I mean, I think that probably selects for people who are at least, respectful of and aware of the value of how it used to be done.

And it's something that I in part because it's what I grew up doing and got to the point where I felt I could teach doing an older model of doing it.

So, I mean, I don't think anyone there was coming to Newhouse purely to be the new TikTok.

I mean, there wasn't such a thing as Tick Tock when I started or when you were there, right.

But, I mean, I think everyone there realizes that there is no that, like, print, you know, inches of copy on a piece of paper or just switched over on the CMS to the website has any kind of monopoly on insight or value.

And in fact, if you're talking about music, like being able to do it where like the five minutes where you can actually hear some of the music or you can actually see there, I mean, there's a lot to be gained by using these multi-platform things or, from our area.

Rick.

Is it Beato or Beethoven?

Yeah, I know, yeah, I know who does these amazing music essays that, again, are not essay criticism, but again, in that model of pay attention to this, listen to this, understand this, the sort of critic as educator side that's I guess that's also the thing whether it's positive, negative, neutral.

The scariest thing is actually no one's going to say anything about you in any platform.

Yeah.

And later in the piece, that independence, part comes in where Richard Brody essentially makes the case that even, you know, a well reported and sort of embedded profile of an artist, while in the promotion cycle or the marketing cycle for their new work is inherently promotional because you're sort of in that conversation with them, whereas criticism stands apart from that and doesn't have to be like, play that game, so to speak.

Which I think is very interesting and I think, it also kind of ties into me in my head.

It ties into this question of, there are some, I think, misunderstandings about the role of I know we sort of established this, but like, are there do you do you all have things that you think that people misunderstand about the role of criticism?

Because this comes up like I and I think that I'm not on Twitter anymore, but I used to spend too much, time when like a new pop star had an album out and then there would be some sort of mini, controversy where the fans would go against the critic of a particular publication, and sometimes there was doxing, like, it can get kind of dark.

All of this because for, for in many cases what was largely a pretty like fair and, and in some cases largely complimentary review, it just wasn't, you know, superlative or whatever.

So that's when I start to think, well, maybe the maybe the role of criticism isn't really understood.

And is that something that comes up for you, Catherine.

Yeah.

Well, I think sometimes depending on going back to kind of who that audience is, a big audience for reviews is marketers who read a review looking for, how can I use this to help sell a show?

I had a friend who worked in marketing who would complain about one critic in particular, who wrote very positive reviews, but not in a way that they could, like, picked out phrases like where's the pull quote?

And yeah, that's kind of my goal to have that, give marketers a hard time, I would say I do think there is a stereotype of the, I would call it the Ratatouille Birdman kind of stereotype of these critics who are just these vipers who live for nothing more than to just rip apart everything they see or listen to.

And I mean, like, we wouldn't go out three, four nights a week and subject ourselves to something that made us miserable.

Like we're doing it because, we at least potentially love every single thing we're going to see.

We don't always love everything, but the hope is always to do that.

And if you can find something, it's a great feeling, especially if it's something's burbling up to the surface.

If you like, you can help pull it up there.

And then sometimes if you're if you're doing your job responsibly means steering people away toward what you deem the good stuff, toward the good stuff, and away from the bad stuff, like that's part of the job, but it doesn't.

That's we're not like rubbing our hands in glee at the prospect.

Yeah, we love this form.

Like whether it's music theater, we're doing it because we're really passionate about it.

We want to see it at its best.

So sometimes it is frustrating when you see something that's not as good as it could be.

Yeah.

And that is, reminds me of something more from my radio side of things and criticism someone said about audiences for classical music, for public radio.

They say they may not like everything you do, but what's really special about them and you, he said, was that they will go to great lengths to find one thing they truly love.

And that's like a beat, right?

You know, there's a lot of stuff that's pretty good stuff you don't like.

But to find that thing that is like, you know, that this band could be your life kind of feeling.

It's really special.

And someday somebody introduced it to, you know, someone put that tape on the first time or they, for me, mentioned Mitski in a New Yorker article.

And I thought, who's that?

Yeah.

You know, so that's really wonderful to open a door for someone.

So I think in addition to loving the arts that we're covering, is with loving the feeling of being like your friend, you know.

But I was just thinking the other thing for me, and I don't know if it's I mentioned, you know, sort of my dilemma between, like it or not, or at least what to pay attention to my other thing.

When I reviewed reviews of something I've been out that drives me nuts is my goal is always to be to have it actually resemble that we were in the audience at the same show.

The weirdest reviews are to me, whether or not we agree, whether you liked it, but I'm like, did we actually sit in the same theater and go to the same movie, play concert?

What?

So yeah, that I don't know if that's part of it also is that's one of my standards for a review.

We're in the same room, right?

Yeah.

That seems like a pretty basic.

I had a poetry professor once who said, you know, it's poetry.

This is a pretty subjective thing, but, we can all agree, right, that this is a Philadelphia poem and not an Arizona poem, or he had some sort of thing like that, but it's like, you know, we all want to be in the same room.

So whether that's quite literally the same room when you're talking about life performance or the metaphorical room of understanding art, kind of under the same sort of umbrella using the same kinds of tools.

That's super interesting to me, because sometimes when I see a show, I feel like I'm in a different room than the audience.

Whether it's because everybody around me is just like thunderously laughing, applauding, and I'm Stony Face feeling like that.

Stereotypical critics.

Okay, there is a certain movie musical, touring, production I saw recently that I did feel I was in a very different room than everybody else.

Perhaps a different Delorean.

Right?

So I feel like part of the role of the critic, though, is to understand, like, okay, this is not for me, but this is clearly tapping into something that everybody else, what is that thing and how could I convey it in a way with while also staying true to my voice and what I felt like was unimpressive about the show?

But when I'm working with my students and I'm workshopping some of their pieces of criticism, their reviews, I find they're often talking about how the audience loved this or the audience was really into this, and it it I.

To me, that's only valuable in the context of a review.

If you are swimming against the tide of that, like if you're you're sort of set like if I don't know if I want to know what a lot of people think of something, I'll just go to Rotten Tomatoes or like I'm interested in your specific your unique experience of it and what that is.

And so the people around you are really have no bearing on that, unless it's what Mona's definitely not naming as a as a reason.

I'd say also that cats review where I, trashed cats that I did say, you know, I was not having a good time, but everybody around me was happily singing and clapping along to Mr. Masterfully.

So I tried to express the mismatch.

It was that old.

Was that can 50 million Elvis fans be wrong or whatever?

Like, actually, yes they could.

I don't think they are.

In his case.

But then of course they could be.

And that's telling when sometimes things are, you know, running askance to the prevailing opinion, like there's nothing wrong with that.

So I think in our last few minutes here, we can wrap up in a few of we could obviously talk about this for probably three more hours.

Is there one piece of criticism that you return to, one that you try to use as like a guiding, a guiding light or North Star, or just something that maybe something that you outright hated that stays with you because you just can't believe how wrong they got it.

That's something I'm fascinated with because I have one that was a very online thing, but it's at the website Stereogum.

They they celebrated the ten, the ten year anniversary of the third strokes album, which, like first Strokes ends, is like a largely inconsequential album because the first two are the ones that everyone talks about.

But it was written in such a way that threaded a lot of like, contemporary pop and rock history into this album.

That's largely inconsequential, which I found to be fascinating approach to stuff.

So is there stuff like that?

Is there is there stuff that maybe one maybe wanted you to, that made you want to try it yourself?

Maybe, I don't know, I can start with whoever maybe has one at the ready or who doesn't, but, review that I kind of changed or helped me understand what reviews can do is steep Tran's review of Miss Saigon, which is a show that I had mixed feelings about, but having, a Vietnamese critic base a review that was very personal but also like recognize the context of the show was like, oh, you can have like, weird feelings about a show, and a critic can put it in a way that elucidates what is problematic or uncomfortable about what's happening on stage.

Okay, Mona, do you have one quickly?

I have, well, there's a book I like, and I feel bad.

I can't remember the author because it's great writing.

It's just interesting thinking about all this.

It's about it's that 33 and a third series where album people normally write about albums they love so much.

But this author wrote about Celine Dion, and it's called something like In the Limits of Taste.

So she explores the idea of what taste is to him.

Oh yeah.

Okay, here, I'll go back to my origin story.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was the first movie I was allowed to go see by myself.

I saw it about a dozen times.

Pauline Kael ripped it apart in The New Yorker, and I was deeply troubled by that.

And yet I go back to like, where you ended up, which is the power of criticism, right?

A radioactive spider.

Well, I we've been talking about the state of arts criticism.

I want to thank Eric Brody, associate professor at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.

Catherine Varga, theater critic.

You can read her work at City.

Mona, sacred to our salami, WXXI classical music director.

You can read her work also at city.

I'm Patrick Hosking.

Thanks, everybody for joining.

And, More Connections is up next.

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