#music-journalism

#music-journalism

Andrew Clements, who has died aged 75 after a period of ill health, was for more than three decades the Guardian's chief classical music critic. His style was a model of critical integrity authoritative and intelligent, sometimes enthusiastic and sometimes slightly grumpy, dry-humoured yet never showy. Music may say things that words cannot express, but he mastered the rare art of putting music into words, always using language with precision; reading him, you knew what a performance had sounded like.

The site was launched "January 1st, 2002, on a whim," founder Scott Lapatine told The Verge. Originally, this early staple of the music blog era was focused almost entirely on music discovery and posting MP3s. "It was the early days of like Windows Media Player and Real Player," Scott remembers. Today, the site is focused on music journalism and has just relaunched to keep up with a media landscape being overrun by AI.

I was a newspaper reporter with USA Today at the time, and I'd arranged an hour-long sit-down with the bandwhich they abruptly canceled shortly before we were set to meet. Why? Well, Robert Redford had made them a better offer. The Sundance founder (and Sundance Kid) had invited them to his mountainside Sundance Mountain Resort to have a drink at his personal watering hole.