OLD ARTS, NEW MEDIA

posted by James Reel

    Writes John Lambert, “I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere in your area, but these online things are starting to make a difference as more & more commercial platforms fall by the wayside.” Lambert operates one of those “online things,” Classical Voice of North Carolina, a Web site dedicated to reviews of classical music performances in the Raleigh/Winston-Salem area. Lambert decided to launch his site when he saw the regional print outlets dropping their serious coverage of classical music. Lambert’s wasn’t the first site to take up the slack left by newspapers and magazines abandoning their commitment to arts coverage, and indeed the number of sites like CVNC is growing, if slowly. Here’s a perfect example of how New Media can step in to correct the errors and omissions of Old Media platforms.
    Today, I’m pleased to add to the blogroll on the right a section called “Review Sites.” It’s a way for you to check the state of the arts elsewhere in the country, as covered by feisty independent critics. Here's a quick tour, of the sites, with descriptions in the operators’ own words:
    CLASSICAL VOICE OF NORTH CAROLINA (John Lambert, administrator)
    “CVNC, modeled on a similar site in San Francisco (SFCV) whose founder was of immense value to us as we got off the ground, exists as a direct result of a decision in early 2001 by Spectator Magazine to abandon coverage of classical music, which had been featured in its pages since 1978. Spectator dropped classical a month to the day after the grand opening of Raleigh's BTI Center for the Performing Arts, with three new halls, two of which were intended primarily for music (including opera) and dance. Within several months, Independent, the other major alternative and ‘a&e’ paper in the Triangle, asked its classical critics to abandon reviews in favor of ‘glitzy’ previews. A full discussion of why reviews and a decent calendar are important to artists and the community would consume all our space and more, but we'll take as a given the fact that readers of this document know, understand, and appreciate them. Since Indy 's critics were every bit as serious as Spectator's had been, it didn't take us long to get together, and with a lot of encouragement from our former readers and presenters and a few key arts patrons, we, collectively, decided that we needed to have something in place by the time the Fall 2001 season began, in order to fill the not-inconsiderable voids created by our former (commercial) employers. We started on a hope and a prayer, with no capital, and with no real awareness of what we were getting into. It took about ten minutes to decide that CVNC , which the idea was to become, could NOT succeed in print (due to prohibitive costs of printing and distribution and administration and ad- or subscription sales), and that SFCV would serve as a viable model for us. Indeed, we perceive that serious commentary on the arts—all the arts—will in time be found only in the commercial papers of our largest cities and online.”
    SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE (Mickey Butts and others)
    “SFCV is a not-for-profit enterprise supported by foundation grants and individual contributions. … From September 1, 1998 to September 13, 2005, SFCV has published, in addition to the Music News, feature pieces and weekly editorials, 2182 reviews of Bay Area performances by: 52 symphony orchestras (459 reviews), 89 chamber groups (267), 36 new music ensembles and programs (234), 39 opera companies (306), 29 choral groups (133), 15 music festivals (101), 33 early music ensembles (170), 24 chamber orchestras (88), 6 musical theater groups (14), world music (14), recitals (374), youth music (10), other (12).”
    ARTS SAN FRANCISCO (ARTSSF) (Paul Hertelendy)
    “Live-concert reviews from the San Francisco Bay Area of classical music as well as dance, theater and books, all emphasizing modern creativity (20th and 21st century) in the region.”
    MUSIC IN CINCINNATI (Mary Ellyn Hutton)
    “MusicInCincinnati.com is a kind of ‘keyhole’ on classical music in Cincinnati offering reviews, feature articles and news about events and organizations in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky and elsewhere. The author, Mary Ellyn Hutton, is a free lance writer with 20 years experience as a music critic and reporter, most of the time as classical music critic for The Cincinnati Post in Cincinnati, Ohio.”