This page is in two sections. The first is my evaluations of a handful of critics. The second is a list of critics who have written about my stuff. Click on the name to see what they’ve written.

Criticizing the Critics

Ideally a piece of arts criticism can stand alone as a work of literature. Articles by masters such as David Denby (film) or Calvin Trillin (food) are engaging even to the reader who has no intention of consuming the product under review. For those who do choose to watch, read, eat, look at, or listen to the subject of a review, the criticism should deepen the experience of watching, reading, eating or whatever. 
 

It is a sacred duty to be a critic in any field, including music. Not only can a critic affect the professional course of a musician’s life, the critic may actually affect how people listen to music. It is interesting and distressing that the potential importance of the critics’ role has no apparent relationship to their abilities or training. In fact, for many publications blogs the only qualification for a music critic is the willingness to be a music critic. The reason is economic. Many smaller publications offer only token payment. These hobbyist critics and perhaps even many of the pros do this work for the love of the music. They listen to staggering quantities of recordings. They write for near to nothing and then in their off hours blog and comment on blogs about the same stuff. God love them for that. 

The bigger publications pay better, of course, and their critics are more polished. But too often avant-jazz critics are stumped as to what to say. They rely on two common strategies. The first is simple affect. “I liked this. I didn’t like that.” They function as a Consumer Reports for music. The other is to offer blow-by-blow descriptions of the music in allegorical language. “Lowe then enters like sparks careening from a welder’s torch. Reacting with alarm, Drake parries with snare-drum thunderclaps and floor-tom canon blasts. Soon…” and so on. 

Below each critic is evaluated for his or her body of work rather than for individual reviews. The rating system is divided into two components: reviewership and musicianship (where known), each on a scale of zero to five upturned noses. 

Why am I qualified to critique critics? As part of my graduate research I studied the topic of criticism and conducted experiments on how reading criticism affected listening. I have been reviewed and interviewed often enough to be exposed to some critics’ strengths and weaknesses (don’t get me started on, well just don’t get me started). And if they can, why can’t I?

Many critics can be thin skinned considering that they make it their mission criticizing the art of others. Some have even written or called to complain about their evaluations. And it can be no shock that some have made and kept promises to stop writing about my music. Life goes on.

Russell Carlson

publications ➤ Jazz Times (associate editor), Harp (associate editor)

personal contacts ➤ None

reviewed ➤ Song Songs Song, christangelfox, 15=15

bias ➤ Stylistically he stopped listening in 1955. Especially fond of pre-bop guitar virtuosos. He really really really hates my music.

reviewership ➤ Loads his copy with so many cringe-inducing archaic hipster clichés that it is impossible to take his analysis seriously. 1.5 upturned noses

musicianship ➤ Appears to be a guitarist, but that’s all I know. Evaluation pending.

aggregate rating ➤ 1.5 upturned noses

John Corbett

publications ➤ DownBeat

personal contacts ➤ My trio was one of the first groups he booked into his Empty Bottle series. He is polite and intelligent and knowledgeable about many genres of music. No fan of mine, however.

reviewed ➤ None

bias ➤ An academic who studied early free-jazz musicians for his doctoral work, Corbett has a love of outsider musicians and faux outsiders as well.

reviewership ➤ Well informed but his prose is remarkably old-school for someone so smitten with the avant-garde. 3.5 upturned noses

musicianship ➤ Enthusiastic, but unskilled guitarist 1.5 upturned noses

aggregate rating ➤ 2.5 upturned noses

Julian Cowley

publications ➤ The Wire

personal contacts ➤ One or two emails

reviewed ➤ this that, 96 Gestures, Dénouement, The Diary of Dog Drexel

bias ➤ Seems to prefer avant-jazz.

reviewership ➤ Well-read, good writer. 4 upturned noses

musicianship ➤ Unknown

aggregate rating ➤ 4 upturned noses

Stefan Gijssels

publications ➤ Free Jazz Blogspot

personal contacts ➤ Two emails.

reviewed ➤ Bitter Love Songs, Drawings, Fugu, I Never Meta Guitar

bias ➤ It seems as though he listens primarily to rock and post-bop and he appears ignorant of New Music and Experimental Music. "The three great musicians of the last century all three came to their peak in the 60s: John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix. In the totality of human musical history, you can forget about the rest of twentieth century composers, but not those three.”

reviewership ➤ Strong opinions and an absence of knowledge is a deadly combination. 2 upturned noses

musicianship ➤ Unknown

aggregate rating ➤ 2 upturned noses

Walter Horn

publications ➤ Cadence

personal contacts ➤ Walter sent me an email when I accidentally credited one of his reviews to a different writer. Later he submitted one of his projects to my now-deceased label Geode.

reviewed ➤ Sonotropism

bias ➤ A fan of and participant in avant-garde jazz and improvised music.

reviewership ➤ Mean spirited and sometimes misinformed. 2 upturned noses

musicianship ➤ Judging from the one recording of his that I have heard, incompetent musician. 1.5 upturned noses

aggregate rating ➤ 2 upturned noses

Tom Hull

publications ➤ tomhull.com, appears to vote in several critics polls

personal contacts ➤ none

reviewed ➤ Bitter Love Songs, Fugu, Minaret Minuets, Moersbow/OZZO, Five Frozen Eggs

bias ➤ Unknown

reviewership ➤ He writes capsule reviews of a flood of submissions. The most unpalatable aspect of his reviews is his high-school grading system. (My lowest grade has been B+ and the highest has been A-.) That's even more sophomoric than upturned noses. He loses two upturned noses for repeatedly comparing me to Derek Bailey and half for calling Moersbow/OZZO "more pleasing than anyone would expect," which reveals that he didn't expect it to be pleasing. 2.5 upturned noses

musicianship ➤ unknown

aggregate rating ➤ 2.5 upturned noses

Budd Kopman

publications ➤ All About Jazz

personal contacts ➤ We had a weird exchange. In his review of Song Songs Song he busted me for an error in my liner notes (I meant sharp 9 but wrote flat 9), but then erroneously said that a person I quoted (snidely, he says) “does not even know Fields.” She does and I told him, but he left the error posted.

reviewed ➤ Song Songs Song

bias ➤ Unknown

reviewership ➤ He reviewed the CD in a vacuum, without listening to anything else of mine, and made several errors. But although he could have spent less time analyzing the liner notes, he seemed to grasp the music. 2.5 upturned noses

musicianship ➤ Appears to be a guitarist, but that’s all I know. Evaluation Pending.

aggregate rating ➤ 2.5 upturned noses

Jon Morgan

publications ➤ Signal to Noise, Cadence

personal contacts ➤ I met Jon when he contacted me for an interview. He stayed at my house overnight, talked to me for hours, until I refused to continue, and then told me that he didn’t have a publication for the story. He was just hoping to find one and never did.

Some time later I invited him to watch my ensemble rehearse, record, and perform my composition “96 Gestures.” The idea wasn’t so much that he needed to write about the project, but that it would bring him in contact with the musicians, including Joseph Jarman, Myra Melford, Rob Mazurek, Matt Turner, Dylan van der Skyff, Francois Houle, and others.

He didn’t take a single note during the five days that he observed us. He barely spoke to anyone. When he returned to Minneapolis he spammed all 13 of the musicians with a long questionnaire. The result was a flood of what-the-fuck? emails from the musicians to me. Nothing came of this visit either.

A couple of years later Jon told Signal-to-Noise that he would write a profile of me and asked for a stack of my CDs they had in a queue to be reviewed. Did the same with Coda, but never wrote for either and both publications then couldn’t review the CDs because he wouldn’t return them. On a blog, he also outed my Asperger’s, which was supposed to be in confidence. I will someday punch him on his upturned nose.

reviewed ➤ Disaster at Sea, Five Frozen Eggs

bias ➤ Avant-garde jazz.

reviewership ➤ Ultimate slacker amateur. Would give him 0.5 upturned nose, but I’ll throw in an extra for the nice label he used to run. 1.5 upturned noses.

musicianship ➤ Unknown

aggregate rating ➤ 1.5 upturned noses

awaiting judgement

— but still clickable to read their reviews —