Received for Review
This covers responses to submissions for review, i.e., artists, composers, agents or others who have sent me music / media for reviewing. I’m keeping those separate from reviews of music in my personal library, just so that you are clear about the “mechanism”: with music that I have purchased, I’m usually quite outspoken. “Gifts” (even if they were done with the intent of getting a review), I treat similar to a concert review, i.e., I may be a little more careful. I won’t deliver complacency judgments, though, but will rather refuse to review and/or return the media if I think that my comment(s) might be detrimental to the submitter (artist / composer).
If you consider sending me music for reviewing: note that I’m pretty “booked out”, i.e., I can’t guarantee responses in a given time, nor even that I will review unsolicited submissions (you may want to check with me first).
Also, I will only consider reviewing music that falls into what I consider classical music (my key focus being between the 15th and the early 20th century), and which I feel competent enough to comment (i.e., no cross-over / fusion, no Jazz, no folk, no Pop/Rock, etc., etc.). Even within classical music, I (usually) don’t review opera—I feel that I don’t have the competence to write about stage direction etc.—and for ballet performances I even lack the vocabulary (whatever language!) to describe what I see etc.
