By David Gordon, CVPost Board chair
The CVPost is pleased to announce that we will be resuming periodic reviews of local music events, starting with this past Friday’s performance by UW-Eau Claire’s Jazz Ensembles I and II and The Niskas, a Minneapolis-based trio of Blugold alumni.
You may recall that Jenna Luginbill, then a Memorial High School senior, provided a couple of reviews during last spring’s Jazz Fest. She’s now a UW-EC first-year student, and a member of the Blugold Marching Band, an activity that occupied a great deal of her time this fall.
Now that December is here, Jenna is available to contribute some reviews for the CVPost‘s audience and we’re delighted to have her aboard once again. Her Friday night review has been posted, under the “Entertainment Reviews” heading on our home page.
Barring last-minute schedule complications, Jenna will also be reviewing the joint concert next Friday by the Chippewa Valley Symphony Orchestra and the Chippewa Valley Jazz Orchestra.
Why . . . ?
You may wonder why we plan to review events that have only a single performance (or, as with last Friday’s concert, two performances in very close succession). After all, one major purpose of reviews is to give potential audience members some idea of whether they might want to attend a future performance. And if there are no future performances, why bother?
There are two answers to that question. One is simply to provide public recognition that the event was part of the local cultural landscape. The second reason goes back to something I heard over 50 years ago from the managing editor of the paper where I was working.
His experience, he said, indicated that when people attend any kind of event – a concert, a sports event, a play, whatever – the first thing they look at in the paper the next day is the account of that event. They’re interested, he said, in seeing how the event was reported or reviewed and, perhaps more important, in comparing their own perceptions with what was written about it.
We think there’s still a great deal of truth in that observation.
Filling a gap
So, since other Chippewa Valley media provide few if any reviews of single events, we’ll do our best to fill that gap. At a minimum, this will provide the public acknowledgement that I mentioned above.
It will also provide the opportunity for audience members to check their response to an event with what Jenna or any other CVPost reviewer may write. We hope you’ll find these reviews worth your time to read, and we would welcome your thoughts on their value to you.
Please let us know if we’re on the right track here.
The CVPost is looking to expand its list of reviewers so we can cover additional single performance events. If you’re interested in this opportunity, please contact us at cvpostwi@gmail.com or by phone at 715-271-5736.