Andrew Patner, who died Feb. 3, 2015, was the critic-at-large for WFMT-FM and contributing critic on classical music for the Chicago Sun-Times. A Chicago native and longtime Hyde Park resident, he also was a popular speaker, lecturer and moderator, and author of I.F. Stone: A Portrait (1988). He adopted the nickname of “aP,” with a lowercase “a,” to distinguish it from the abbreviation for the Associated Press.

Studs Terkel, longtime WFMT-FM host, wrote that Patner “emerged as perhaps the finest observer of the arts that we have.” Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker magazine, called Patner “one of the wisest, wittiest, most generous, most avid, most altogether vital people in the world of the arts. He offered advice, he offered criticism, he offered time, and he offered knowledge — staggeringly encyclopedic knowledge — on every imaginable subject.”

At the public celebration of Patner’s life on March 18 at Orchestra Hall, CSO violist Max Raimi saluted the arts critic and remembered him as “the greatest friend the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ever had or ever are likely to have.”

The following category collects the many tributes written in Mr. Patner’s honor.