Music Critics Organization of North America
Mission Statement: “To strengthen the profession of classical music journalism”
MCANA is a small but influential organization founded in 1956. Early members included leading critics such as Paul Hume of the Washington Post, Irving Lowens of the Saturday Review, Miles Kastendieck of the New York Herald Tribune and Harold C. Schoenberg of the New York Times. Current members include all of the critics at the New York Times, regular contributors to the Wall Street Journal, primary critics at the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Enquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dallas Morning-News, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, as well as leading online publications like Musicalamerica.com, NewMusicBox, program annotators and radio producers The organization is a member of the National Music Council. We are the only North American association devoted solely to professional classical music critics.
Primary activities
Annual conferences with panels/workshops in tandem with summer festivals, professional conferences or other activities
MCANA Institutes - Educational seminars to promote high standards of music criticism. Foundation support over the years has included grants from the Ford Foundation, the Corbett Foundation, and in-kind support from the Van Cliburn Competition, the Juilliard School, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center and the Luminato Toronto Festival of Arts & Creativity
Special Events
1987 - A public forum on “Music Criticism in America’s Press” at the Kennedy Center with panelists including violinist Isaac Stern, NPR commentator and former White House correspondent Daniel Schorr, New York Times music critic emeritus Harold C. Schonberg, and other leading critics.
2004 - Joined with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University-NAJP conference to present “Shifting Ears,” the first national conference on music criticism. Panelists included MCANA members Alex Ross, from the New Yorker, Martin Bernheimer and Alan Rich from Los Angeles,
Pulitzer-Prize winner Justin Davidson of New York Newsday and Anthony Tommasini and James R. Oestreich from the New York Times, as well as several critics from Europe and the U.K. In conjunction with the conference, the first survey of music criticism in the media was published in tandem with the conference, a collaborative project of MCANA, NAJP and Princeton University.
2005 - Held our annual conference in Los Angeles in conjunction with critics in dance, theater, jazz and visual arts—the first multi-disciplinary conference for critics in the U.S.
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