Room Tone

Room Tone is a series of public critical listening sessions. Each event presents a recent musical work — a composition or album — in the presence of the artist, accompanied by a response from a critic. Room Tone invites the audience to share their listening experience and explore what defines contemporary musical practices.
 

While recorded and live music are more readily accessible than ever before, critical conversations about musical production are conspicuously rare in the public sphere. Room Tone invites those interested in the creation and reception of new music to reinvest the role of public criticism. By pairing musicians of multiple genres with critics practicing in different forms, Room Tone reactivates varied understandings of what and why composers and musicians are making and how it is heard.
 

Room Tone is convened by John-Robin Bold. It is produced with support from Hinrichsen Foundation.