Taking on the Critics

Taking on the Critics

I just wanted Leah Ollman to know that my life has been shattered since reading her review of the exhibition of my photographs at the Orange County Museum (“Framing Light Without Heat,” Feb. 16). My wife decided indeed I was passionless and left me; my kids decided indeed I wasn’t funny and left me; my psychiatrist decided indeed I wasn’t ironic and left me ... and my dog left when I beat her with the L.A. Times.

I hope that before running a review this personally devastating, Ollman will consider what can result from such critical writing.

RICHARD ROSS

Santa Barbara

*

The Times has again given Andre Watts a correct yet understated review and has again treated his concerto performance as background to a conductor (“Young Conductor Makes Strong L.A. Debut,” by Daniel Cariaga, Feb. 16). Watts deserves far more. An Andre Watts performance is a predictably striking combination of deep interpretative profundity and stunning technique, and this performance of the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto did not disappoint. Watts’ second movement was the high point of the entire event.

LAWRENCE TEETER

MICHELE GRUMET

Los Angeles

*

It’s bad enough that one of our most valuable native art forms, American roots music, has been historically ignored, passed over and relegated to the back bins of old music stores. But to have a misguided modern critic such as Richard Cromelin further distort it in his review of the “Down From the Mountain” concert at Universal Amphitheatre is just plain ridiculous (“Acoustic Americana,” Feb. 19).

One would think a semi-educated guy like Cromelin would be willing to judge the concert and its content without preconceptions, but he blathered on for several paragraphs about the “unjustified air of self-congratulation” evinced by Bob Neuwirth, the able and wry singer of songs chosen as master of ceremonies, who celebrated the tremendous surge of popular response to this great music with genuine warmth and love. Then Cromelin waxed poetic on the emphasis on female artists being showcased, without getting the fact that this vital music is not about a male or a female sensibility, nor is it a vehicle for feminism--it’s just a tradition that is carried by the faithful, telling simple stories that have real emotional weight.

Any artificial agenda attached to the music, as Cromelin feebly attempted to do, simply falls flat on its fanny.

STEPHEN PATT

Santa Monica