For 20 years, music critic and author Ben Ratliff was a jazz and pop critic at the New York Times. His articles have appeared in the New York Review of Books, Esquire, Slate, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He teaches cultural criticism at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. In Ratliff’s own words, this talk discusses “ways in which virtuosity, in classical and popular music, is not everything, not an end in itself, and a deeply flawed idea — and yet is a crucial way to understand how music is understood and valued by musicians, critics, and listeners.”