Eric Tadsen
Left to right: Kent Williams, Tom Laskin, Dean Robbins (seated), Linda Falkenstein and Tenaya Darlington, in 2001.
Covering the arts, left to right: Kent Williams, Tom Laskin, Dean Robbins (seated), Linda Falkenstein and Tenaya Darlington, in 2001.
Duke Ellington’s big band sounded like no other because of his unique approach to composition. In jazz’s 20th century heyday, a composer usually started by writing a song, and then a random group of musicians performed it. Ellington flipped that script by starting with the musicians. He gathered a group of rare individuals, crafting the music around their idiosyncrasies. That gave the likes of “Mood Indigo” and “Satin Doll” their special character: passionate, playful, often profound.
From its beginnings in 1976, Isthmus’ arts section followed the Ellington prototype. Like him, we attracted singular stylists. Then we orchestrated their obsessions into our coverage of local and national arts. It was something new for Madison: an alternative to the mainstream-media model. Readers picked up the paper on Thursdays to see what on earth this uncommon crew would say next.
Our writers often had no previous journalism experience, but they did have a burning interest in film, music, theater, books, visual art, dance, and architecture. Where else could a movie critic like Mike Wilmington write 3,000 dazzling words about Orson Welles just because he thought Welles warranted the ink? Where else could an architecture critic like Kent Williams write about the Capitol building just because he had a brilliantly original take on it? Where else could a jazz critic like me write about the long-dead Duke Ellington just because…well, the reason now escapes me.
And did our merry band of arts nerds care deeply about every sentence? Oh, lordy. I can’t count the number of times a writer called me minutes before the Wednesday deadline, begging to change a single adjective.
As Isthmus’ arts editor from 1986 to 2008, with a couple of sabbaticals for far less fascinating work, I regularly put out a call for new writers to see what gems might turn up. That’s how we found the incomparable Tom Laskin, Linda Falkenstein, Cathryn Harding, Kenneth Burns, Jessica Steinhoff, Tenaya Darlington, Paul (Gerard) Kosidowski, Bill Forman, Rachel Pastan, Aaron R. Conklin, Sara Freeman, Raphael Kadushin, Susan Kepecs, Rich Albertoni, Jody Clowes, Jennifer Smith, Michael Popke, Laura Stempel Mumford, Jess Anderson, Ann Shaffer, Lue Allen, Jacqueline West, Katie Reiser, Sandy Tabachnick, Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento and John Barker. Then there were the big voices who preceded me, such as Joanne Weintraub, Phil Davis, Bruce Murphy, Maureen Mecozzi, David Medaris, Mike Baron, Stu Levitan and James Rhem. Please meet me at the old Isthmus office on King Street (now a pizza restaurant) so I can tell you about dozens of others.
These writers produced masterpieces of thought and feeling that stand the test of time. Many of them developed major national reputations and won major awards. Not that Isthmus put much stock in the journalism-awards game, but it was a cheap thrill to see our scrappy arts section come out of nowhere to beat better-funded publications.
You can’t create arts-critic heaven without a supportive publisher. Vince O’Hern granted us the freedom to speak our minds and question conventional wisdom. That takes guts when your free newsweekly is supported wholly by advertising. A handful of angry clients dropped their ads or barred us from their venues, but Vince never blinked. In one of his most astonishing displays of journalistic integrity, he let us run a damning review of the paper’s own 1987 music festival. Is it any wonder that so many of Madison’s best and brightest arts writers stuck with Isthmus for years despite the modest paychecks?
Let me be the first to acknowledge that we fell short of perfection. Sometimes our critics missed the mark (see: my TV column panning the soon-to-be-classic 30 Rock). Sometimes our attempts at straight-shooting edged into snark. Here and there, it must be said, we published the thing we most wanted to avoid: an unexciting issue. Blame it on the merciless weekly deadline, an overstretched editorial staff, or my own misjudgments. Hey, even Ellington had his clunkers.
Hopefully our good deeds outweighed our bad ones, as when Jay Rath’s crusading article on the historic Capitol Theater helped save it from the wrecking ball. We ran vital arts news that appeared in no other media; profiles of overlooked local artists and groups deserving of recognition; weekly entertainment highlights based on our critics’ authoritative judgments; and deep-dive previews of what we considered the worthiest performances and exhibitions.
In our pages, culture was more than a back-of-the-book afterthought. It was the heartbeat of the community, and we reveled in taking its pulse.
Isthmus has now offered a half-century’s worth of perspective — gratis — for Madison readers who adore the arts as much as we do. And that’s the key phrase here. “Madison readers.” Everything we’ve written is in service to our discerning, ever-curious local audience.
To quote Duke himself: “We love you madly.”
