In Sunday’s (1/15) Plain Dealer (Cleveland), Zachary Lewis writes, “Performers may be the chief export of Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Recently, however, the school has also started grooming critics, training students to write about music as well as play it. Whether any of the 10 students involved in the inaugural Rubin Institute for Music Criticism goes on to a career in writing remains to be seen. But in the days before the institute’s finale gets under way, its participants and planners are already calling the experiment a success. … Even publisher Stephen Rubin, whose gift funded the five-day institute and a $10,000 prize, said his intent was never to channel students into professional music criticism, where full-time opportunities are scarce (and getting scarcer). Rather, Rubin said, his goal was to lay a new foundation, to more fully equip a few members of the next generation to write about classical music, if and when they decide to take up the pen. … The list of guests this week could hardly be more distinguished. There’ll be enough critical star power to illuminate the campus: Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker; Washington Post critic Anne Midgette; Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and educator Tim Page; John Rockwell, a former editor at The New York Times; and Heidi Waleson of the Wall Street Journal.” Visit SymphonyNOW to read Jennifer Melick’s interview of Rubin and Oberlin Conservatory Dean David Stull concerning the Rubin Institute.
Posted January 17, 2012
