Jennie Oh Brown and Howard Reich both earn a living through music. Jennie is a performer as well as executive and artistic director of the Ear Taxi Festival. Howard retired earlier this year from the Chicago Tribune, where he’d been a jazz and classical music critic for decades. For StoryCorps, Jennie told Howard what it’s like to be on the opposite end of a critique.

The Ear Taxi Festival is a presentation of New Music Chicago and runs from Sept.15 through Oct. 4 at venues across the city, with 600 artists participating, all connected to Chicago. The vast majority of the festival is free.

The music featured in this story is “Plea for Peace,” performed by Jennie Oh Brown and composed by Augusta Read Thomas, who launched the Ear Taxi Festival in 2016.

This interview was facilitated for StoryCorps by Mary Bess Ser.

Bill Healy produces StoryCorps Chicago for WBEZ and teaches journalism at Northwestern University. A podcast he produced was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting. Follow him @chicagoan.