Compliments are something I’m inured to, and I’m well aware that everyone in every public field receives them for reasons that have nothing to do with quality. But I am particularly touched by Time Out‘s mention of my new book Music Downtown. In an article reviewing New York’s critics they don’t include me, of course, since I haven’t written in the city since last December. But they do include my book in a list of anthologies of criticism, with the very kind comment:
One of the cruelest cuts of the ongoing reorganization at the Voice is the loss of Kyle Gann, the paper’s unparalleled chronicler of contemporary music and the downtown scene in particular. Like [Virgil] Thomson, Gann is a composer; his best pieces are informed by a sense of being in the trenches that no bystander could hope to achieve. As a memento of New York music in the ’80s and ’90s, this anthology is indispensable.
What a gratifying notice.