Mark Gresham | 15 FEB 2023
Today is a special day for EarRelevant as we celebrate its fourth anniversary as a full-time publication. Although it already existed as an informal and very occasional blog, February 15, 2019, was a decisive moment and critical turning point for me as a music journalist in mindset, choices, and actions, including reestablishing myself in the role of a publisher of a periodical.
Here is the review we published at that fulcrum point:
Atlanta Symphony thrills with music of Sibelius and Rachmaninoff
Mark Gresham | 15 FEB 2019
With that review, I burned a bridge behind me, opting for no path but forward.
Without any intention of centering my daily activity upon writing words, in August 1989, Lindsay Cleveland, Carolyn Cleveland, and I launched Chorus!, a monthly publication printed in black-and-white on newsprint, and it had a small but devoted readership with even some international subscribers — even with one in Indonesia.
After the Clevelands moved away from the Atlanta area and Chorus ceased publication, my writing was more sporadic until I began writing for Creative Loafing in late 2002. That was where I and CL won an ASCAP/Deems Taylor award in 2003 for Sounds Like Home (November 13, 2002), an article about Jennifer Higdon, published almost eight years before she won a Pulitzer Prize for music with her Violin Concerto.
I wrote about music for Creative Loafing until September 2011, when I began writing about classical music and opera for ArtsATL. That was a good run until the end of November 2018, when some editorial changes took place that I recognized were neither beneficial for me nor the city’s classical music community. I began to prepare for the worst.
The worst arrived, and I decisively departed ArtsATL with publication of that February 15, 2019 Atlanta Symphony Orchestra review, and never looked back.
Only one year later, we were hit with the COVID pandemic, and we not only survived, but with persistence EarRelevant began to flourish under the most adverse condi
Without any intention of centering my daily activity upon writing words, in August 1989, Lindsay Cleveland, Carolyn Cleveland, and I launched Chorus!, a monthly publication printed in black-and-white on newsprint, and it had a small but devoted readership with even some international subscribers — even with one in Indonesia.
After the Clevelands moved away from the Atlanta area and Chorus ceased publication, my writing was more sporadic until I began writing for Creative Loafing in late 2002. That was where I and CL won an ASCAP/Deems Taylor award in 2003 for Sounds Like Home (November 13, 2002), an article about Jennifer Higdon, published almost eight years before she won a Pulitzer Prize for music with her Violin Concerto.
I wrote about music for Creative Loafing until September 2011, when I began writing about classical music and opera for ArtsATL. That was a good run until the end of November 2018, when some editorial changes took place that I recognized were not beneficial for me, nor the publication itself, nor the city’s classical music community. I began to prepare for the worst.
The worst arrived, and I decisively departed ArtsATL with the publication of that February 15, 2019, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra review, and never looked back.
Only one year later, the COVID pandemic hit, and yet we not only survived but with persistence EarRelevant began to flourish under the most adverse of conditions.
And here we are, alive and kicking, celebrating our fourth anniversary and ready to grow and develop in a still-challenging post-pandemic world.
Join us on EarRelevant’s continued journey, and ask your friends to come along. In one more year, when we’re five years old, we’ll look back and be amazed at how much further we’ve grown. ■
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