Jury Duty (or: when a critic plays a team sport)

Every time I've served on a contest jury, I've learned a thing or two about criticism.

Nubya Garcia & her band in Bremen, for the 2022 German Jazz Prize (Camille Blake)

First and foremost: a great big thanks to everyone who signed up this week for a paid subscription at The Gig. The response has exceeded anything I could have anticipated, and I’m not just talking numbers. You’ve all been incredibly kind and encouraging. I’ll do my best to honor your trust.

I’ve recently been thinking about critical judgment less as a solitary pursuit and more as a product of earnest conversation. One reason for this train of thought is my recent service on a pair of jury panels, for the grant program USArtists International and the third annual German Jazz Prize. In each case, I was the rare practicing critic on a panel otherwise well furnished with artists and arts administrators. Both times, the process of preparation required many hours of research and review, followed by long-distance, long-form deliberations with my fellow jurors.

Decorum and discretion prevent me from revealing much about those meetings. What I can say is that the new USAI grantees truly deserve their honors. Among those winning submissions: Ernest Dawkins’ New Horizons Ensemble, seeking support for a trip to a South African poetry festival, and Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones, traveling to (among other places) the perfectly named Strange Music Festival in Brazil. I wrote a brief news item for WRTI about two Philly-based recipients: the Baroque chamber ensemble Tempesta di Mare and harmolodic funk bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma. (As our classical program director said: what would it sound like if they played together?)

As for the German Jazz Prize, I need to be even tighter-lipped; results will be awarded in a special ceremony at jazzahead! Bremen on April 27. (The photo above shows Nubya Garcia at last year’s event.) The 2023 nominees, at least, are public knowledge, open to your perusal at this spiffy portal. What was under consideration in the jury I served on, during two five-hour sessions over Zoom, were the winners from among those nominees, which had been determined by an earlier panel.

Jury duty in any form can be vexing when discussion reaches an impasse — or worse, when one’s own convictions run against the prevailing tide. For the most part, though, I found these recent experiences to be thoughtful and respectful, even when passions ran high. A few times in the process, some point I made persuaded other jurors to change their minds. A few other times, I was the one persuaded to change. It strikes me now that, in addition to modeling a nontoxic discourse we could really use in other areas of civic life, these panels put in motion an evolved mode of criticism.