Attendance was better than expected and, if applause was any indication, well received. The music, of course, bore little resemblance to the bitter bromides that Weeks served up in her Soundbites column. And of course Fred Hersch doesn't sound like Thelonius Monk. It was never his intention to do so and should have been obvious to anyone who approached the music with an open mind. All of those that I talked who also bothered to read the preview noted that it told more of a redneck revisionist approach to music journalism than of Hersch's eloquent performance.
Time marches on.
New arts presenters emerge from the fertile desert soil, while veteran organizations blossom into full-flowered maturity. Yet the Tucson Weekly's coverage of this is often stuck in the mud. I've ranted enough about this for now and this certainly isn't the first letter I've written to you on this subject. Let Soundbites degenerate back into a rock column. Weeks can't really write, but if all she is covering is folks who can't really play, then little harm is done.