phii • KENNICOTT

Irecently wrote programme notes for a new recording by the man who taught me how to play the piano, more years ago than I care to remember. As a newspaper critic and occasional magazine writer, life is a succession of daily deadlines. There's little time for reflection, little time to dig in pressing deadline, no obligation to any particular public. It was also a powerful experience, a kind of personal regression analysis of my musical inclinations. Normally

I can't not write about it.

Newspaper critics are supposed to recuse themselves from writing about people they know. For many critics this means a lot of recusing, or a lot of quietly breaking the rules. For others it enforces a terrible isolation from the real world of musicmaking. Too many friends in the biz means too many times when you must plead a conflict of interest and hand the job off to someone else.

And so for 20 years I have scrupulously avoided writing about the music ofJoseph Fennimore, a distinguished American composer who studied piano with the legendary Rosina Lhevirme — who taught Van Cliburn among other luminaries.

my teacher, and although I never studied composition with him, his music has coloured my sensibility when judging other people's music. Today, it seems to me as dishonest to avoid acknowledging that simple fact as it would be to make claims about Fennimore's talent without acknowledging the messy ties of friendship.

Middleton, is one of a coterie of