So, I see that City Pages, Mpls/St. Paul’s award-winning alt-weekly newspaper, is out with its annual Best of the Twin Cities issue, and perusing the parade of winners (Garrison Keillor as best columnist? really?), I find myself left with the same question I have every year. In fact, it’s the same question I have every week when I pick up City Pages.
Where’s the classical music?
Seriously, people. This is a newspaper that calls itself “the arts and entertainment weekly.” I understand that it’s basically a hipster rag written by aging hipsters for other aging hipsters, and I get that Orchestra Hall isn’t exactly crawling with that particular demographic (thank God.) But that doesn’t stop CP from covering literally every other art form in town! They cover dance, they cover movies, they cover live theater, they cover art, and they cover every genre of music imaginable – except classical.
I really can’t overstate what a bizarre editorial decision this is. The Twin Cities has, literally, one of the largest and most diverse classical music scenes in America. We’re the only metro area in the country that sustains not one but two major orchestras, the Schubert Club is one of the most respected presenting organizations in the US, Minnesota Opera seems to be on a mission to make itself a nationally known company, the new music seasons that the Walker and the Southern put together are as good and diverse as any series I’ve ever seen, and the Cities are packed to the brim with good freelance musicians and ensembles doing any number of interesting things on a weekly basis…
…and yet, to City Pages, it’s as if this scene doesn’t exist. Thousands upon thousands of tickets sold every week to performances at the Ordway, Orchestra Hall, and any number of smaller venues, but to the cool kids over in the warehouse district, we’re apparently irrelevant. Not marginalized, not confined to an occasional mention or blurb – totally, utterly, 100% invisible and unreported on. And it has been this way for as long as I’ve lived in Minneapolis and, I’m told, much longer than that.
It’s not like this is a typical thing for alt-weeklies, either. The Boston Phoenix puts together some of the best classical coverage that city has to offer. New York’s Village Voice (also CP’s parent company) covers classical, and the New York Observer does some of the best classical stories of anyone in the Big Apple. The Cleveland Scene not only recognizes the existence of classical music in a city that doesn’t have nearly as much of it as we do, it wrote a series of scathing articles about accusations of nepotism at the Cleveland Orchestra a few years back that absolutely rocked the industry. (As far as I can tell, those articles aren’t online anymore, thus the lack of a link.)
Someone at City Pages (I’m guessing someone who’s no longer there, since nearly the entire staff has turned over in the last few years) obviously decided at some point that classical was too old, or too boring, or too uncool, to be worth the paper’s time. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that whoever this was had probably never actually bothered to attend a classical concert in Minnesota before making this decision, because dude, everyone knows classical music is for boring old people! (It’s worth noting that this hatred of classical doesn’t seem to extend to CP’s advertising department, which is only too happy to take our money every single week and run ads aimed squarely at the very demographic groups the editorial side obviously thinks could care less about what we do.)
Of course, there’s no shortage of classical coverage in this town. Both of our major dailies cover classical, as do MinnPost, Minnesota Public Radio, and plenty of other local outlets. But that’s not the point. By deliberately and permanently rubbing classical music out of existence in its pages, City Pages is perpetuating a weekly insult to one of the greatest – and most popular – arts and culture scenes in America. And it’s time someone demanded an explanation.
UPDATE, 7:15pm: MN Orch PR chief Gwen Pappas reminds me that the late, lamented Twin Cities Reader used to publish regular (and rather feisty) classical music commentary by David McKee. The Reader was shut down in 1997 when it wound up being owned by the same company that owned City Pages.
Also, MinnPost’s media guy David Brauer adds a few salient points of his own, and also does the journalistic legwork I don’t know how to do, getting us an actual response from City Pages editor Kevin Hoffman!
“We can never cover all of the things various constituencies want, but we try our best,” [Hoffman] replied, vowing, “you’ll be seeing more fine arts coverage this year in the Dressing Room blog, and we’ll try to include classical as a category in next year’s ‘Best Of.’”
Uh-huh. I’ll be looking forward to that one-paragraph “Best of” a full calendar year from now. Way to step up there, Kevin.
Further Update, 4/22: Hey, willya look at that? Just one day after I post this little rant and David Brauer calls CP for a comment, a preview of this weekend’s classical music offerings pops up on CP’s aforementioned Dressing Room blog! Now, granted, the item is filed under “theater,” the roundup is written by the paper’s theater critic (who, for all I know, may also be a huge classical music buff,) and it only covers the big dogs (MN Orch, SPCO, and MN Opera,) but it’s not nothing…
Points well-taken, Sam. For all the bluster that is showered on the populace about how unsophisticated and lame it is compared to others, this is fairly inexcusable. Then again, after reading CP the few times I have I’m not so sure I’d want the MO to be reviewed by that particular “journal”, awards won notwithstanding.
Look, we’re in a town that has not one fulltime classical music reviewer in either paper, so, this is not terribly surprising. So, if CP doesn’t cover classical music it’s fine with me.
“A man’s gotta know his limitations.”
A link to this entry appeared in my inbox this afternoon — though I’m a Clevelander who thinks the “my” city has plenty of Classical, I’ll be spending Thursday and Friday evenings in the greater twin cities area. I’ve been considering trying to find something to listen to while I’m in the area; are there any good resources for concert listings?
Lincoln (aka LincolnInCleveland.com)
Lincoln, there’s no one great calendar resource for classical concerts in MSP that I know of, though the one at Vita.mn isn’t terrible. http://www.vita.mn/tag_detail.php?tag_id=6611
Strangely, Vita.mn doesn’t list Minnesota Orchestra or St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concerts for this week, but we’re playing the Durufle Requiem (with the renowned St. Olaf Choir) and Stravinsky’s Symphony in D for Strings Thursday and Friday nights at Orchestra Hall in downtown Mpls. The SPCO’s got Thomas Zehetmair playing Mozart at various locations around the metro…
The print media in the Twin Cities all have been severely stressed over the past 3 years or so due to the recession and changes in media strategies by advertisers, so space really is an issue for them. The volume and quality of coverage, however, also depends on the cultural sophistication, or lack thereof, of top management at the newspapers. The rise of the Minnesota Orchestra in the world orchestral pecking order and the transformation of the SPCO should be newsworthy.
The audience for classical music typically comes from the core audience of the daily newspapers, i.e., their strongest, best-educated readers. The editors probably assume that these readers basically get the paper for other information.
One might think that MPR would pick up the challenge, but their coverage is pretty spotty, probably due to stretched resources.
As there is a need here that isn’t being met, maybe someone should create a Twin Cities edition of ArtsJournal.com with a staff of strong writers and really complete and easy-to-use calendar. In this fantasy I’ll assume that a wealthy benefactor will be happy to pick up the tab.
Sam and Lincoln,
Re classical calendars, the best one around — which does include all MN Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra listings, is the Classical Events Calendar from Classical Minnesota Public Radio. Go to classicalmpr.org, and click on “Events” at the top of the page. Tons of other good stuff there too…
Thanks, John. I did check MPR’s events calendar before posting yesterday, but strangely, I can’t get it to come up with any MN Orch or SPCO listings at the moment. A search on listings for today and tomorrow (Lincoln’s specified date range) turns up a piano recital in Northfield, an organ recital in West St. Paul, some U of M events, and the US Army Field Band. Am I doing it wrong?
Go get ‘em Sam.
Here in Philadelphia I wish that the orchestra and the many other classical performing groups received a pico-percentage of the media coverage showered on the Eagles – this city’s perennially losing football team.