The Critical Musician: on thinking and writing like a music critic
The Critical Musician is a workshop for performers, composers, and other music practitioners who want to write about music with greater clarity, personality, and purpose. Led by violinist, journalist, and critic Jennifer Gersten, the session considers what musicians can learn from critics and how writing can support creative work, audience engagement, program curation, grant applications, and the development of personal taste.
Participants will study effective examples of music writing and complete an exercise designed to help them develop their own writing sensibility. The workshop will also examine the current state of music criticism and possible ways for musicians to begin a criticism practice of their own.
Gersten is a Queens-based violinist and writer whose journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Rolling Stone, Gramophone, The Washington Post, and other publications. Her broadcast work includes a PBS NewsHour feature and a podcast for Norwegian experimental label SOFA Music. She received the 2018 Rubin Institute Prize in Music Criticism.
As a performer and creative-music organizer, Gersten has worked in avant-garde and improvised-music communities in Scandinavia and New York. She previously served as a tenured tutti violinist with Helsingborg Symfoniorkester in Sweden. Her 2026 debut album, *Keep Telling Yourself That*, made with bassist Maggie Cox, was released by Relative Pitch. She is also developing a solo album and solo-violin works with Jo David Meyer Lysne, Inga Margrete Aas, and Luis Fernando Amaya. Gersten holds graduate degrees in violin performance from Stony Brook University and a bachelor’s degree from Yale, where she studied English and creative nonfiction.
When: Monday, September 21, 2026
Showtimes: 7:00 PM–10:00 PM
Run time: Approximately 3 hours
Tickets: $10–20
Venue: Rhizome DC
Format: Workshop
Instructor: Jennifer Gersten
Topics: Music writing for public audiences, criticism, creative practice, program curation, audience communication, grant writing, and developing personal taste