Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Rubin Institute


Rubin Institute of Music Criticism panel of writers, consisting of eight men and two women, all white-presenting, mostly middle-aged or older

Rubin Panel


This year, especially, the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism panel is way too homogenous: eight white-presenting men and two white-presenting women; eight from the east coast, one from the west, one bicoastal. I'd be curious about the minimum age of the participants. At this historical moment, it's not a good look. I'm seeing a lot of good discussions about white supremacy in classical music on Twitter, and, well.....

I hope that those who run the Rubin Institute are thinking about this, and trying to figure out how to broaden the panel in various ways. I mean, I can certainly think of a few folks who would be great to have on this panel.

3 comments:

David Bratman said...

Well, this is the first I've heard of this year's institute. Heck of a way to find out.

On top of all, it's mostly just the same people they had the last two times. I'll go if the schedule provides any interesting topics, which it barely did last time.

Lisa Hirsch said...

I haunt their web site.

Yes, they're not swapping the instructors / panel to speak of. They added Gary Giddins in 2018, to include jazz; my comment at the time was "Why not local writer Richard Scheinin?" (He relocated to Santa Fe a couple of years ago, but retains strong ties to SF because he writes for SF Jazz a lot.) They've added Steve Smith, who is a great writer and very smart. They swapped Janice Page for Anne Midgette, who left the Post last year to write a note.

Oh, yeah, Woolfe, who can spout corps peak with worst (I have evidence of this).

As individuals, I'm fine with each of these writers, but the Rubin Institue desperately needs to mix things up more.

Lisa Hirsch said...

As far as going....it'll all have to be on line, so at least there won't be travel problems.