Hybrid Highbrow: news about classical radio around the world

Musician Barry Brake writes to us from San Antonio, Texas:

"Just this year, Texas Public Radio's KPAC San Antonio has started a new classical show, 1–3pm weekdays, called Classical Connections, that features music and musicians from San Antonio, the Hill Country, and Texas, as well as standard fare from our massive classical library. Visiting musicians, local stars, up-and-comers, directors, and composers drop by to talk. Often there are live on-air performances. We'd love to be listed on your page! Thanks for doing what you do . . . "

So I popped into the Classical Connections site and instantly I was enjoying this fantastic piece by Ethan Wickman to celebrate San Antonio's Tricentennial. It is performed by the SOLI Chamber Ensemble.

Variety has a wonderful profile of Los Angeles radio pioneer Saul Levine, age 92, who launched his first classical music station KBCA-FM almost 60 years ago. Author Roy Trakin obviously had fun writing the piece:

Like Daniel-Day Lewis in “There Must Be Blood,” Levine bulldozed the land atop Mt. Wilson –which he leased from the U.S. Forest Service for $350 a year — driving the tractor himself. He acquired a transmitter from a defunct Michigan station for $1,500, had an antenna crafted out of a lead pipe, and bartered commercial time on the yet-to-air station for a $300 flag pole so they could broadcast. He even built a makeshift studio on the site itself, where an eccentric Seven-Day Adventist-turned-engineer who literally lived off the land kept the station on for as close to around the clock as humanly possible.

Soprano Nadine Sierra has produced a beautiful new album titled "There's a Place for Us." The signature song comes from the musical West Side Story. But the message is definitely Sierra's. "No matter what happens in this world," she says in an interview about the album, "no matter what kind of negative messages are being sent by certain people, eventually if we all stick together  . . . we can find a place for all of us to live freely, happily, and with ample love."

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My friend Sherry Gendelman, who hosts a popular Sunday morning classical music show on KPFA in Berkeley, started her program last week with a piece for violin and orchestra. No sooner did the performance begin than the phones started ringing. 'What is this?' six listeners in a row immediately demanded. "I woke up to this magical music. It was so lovely," one caller exclaimed.  "Thank you so much." I am not surprised at the reaction. Sherry started her lineup with Ralph Vaughan Williams' radiant tone poem The Lark Ascending: A Romance for Violin and Orchestra. Marked "Andante Sostenuto" in the orchestral score, the composition begins with a violin cadenza that invokes the scene of a beautiful bird stretching her wings in a garden. It's always a hit with listeners. Sunday morning is the perfect time for a community radio stations to host classical music. While we are on the subject, I can't wait for KSQD-FM (aka "The Squid") in nearby Santa Cruz to start broadcasting. A big chunk of the classical music group associated with now sadly defunct KUSP-FM will be hosting programs on the weekends. Check the end of this post for more details.

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If you Googled anything over the last twelve hours or so, you learned that today is American conductor Leonard Bernstein's 100th birthday. Classical radio station WQXR-FM in New York City has a wonderful memorial to Bernstein, reminding us of his work as a civil rights activist during the 1960s and 1970s, and his advocacy of jazz and popular music. It should also be mentioned that over the course of his career, Leonard Bernstein was relentlessly watched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You can inform yourself about this by visiting the FBI's own archive of its famous probes. "Bernstein (1918-1990) was composer, conductor, and pianist who was investigated by the FBI for his ties to communist organizations," the site notes. "These files range from 1949 to 1963." Actually, they continue through 1974.

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What killed smooth jazz radio? Why aren't there any commercial classical stations any longer? And, why do radio stations have a "format" to begin with? Matthew Lasar joins us to explore these questions about the fundamental organizing principle of most music radio. Matthew is a co-founder of Radio Survivor and the author of three important books on radio, including Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network and Radio 2.0.

Show Notes:

• Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music, by Eric Weisbard
• Matthew likes: KKUP, KZSC, Second Inversion Radio, WQXR New Sounds (formerly Q2)
• Hybrid Highbrow: New music for Paddle to the Sea + nobody told me that smooth jazz died
• Hybrid Highbrow: Somebody stop killing jazz radio please
• OMG a radio station actually keeps its classical format after protests

One of my favorite classical radio stations is making a meal over measures that one of my favorite conductors is taking to combat coughing in the music hall. San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas now gives away cough drops at concerts. Or at least MTT did so at a recent Chicago Symphony event in which the proverbial throat frogs got unusually jumpy during several quiet pieces. These included a Stravinsky elegy for President John F. Kennedy and an early movement of a Mahler symphony. The Maestro described the drastic step he took in a recent interview with Elliott Forrest at WQXR-FM in New York City: "As it happens, just as I had walked on the stage before the Mahler piece I had seen that there was a big box filled with cough drops which is there for members of the orchestra to use it they need it," Thomas explained.

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On Wednesday, into my classical/radio newsfeed fell this notification about Minnesota Classical Radio (MPR)'s playlist for May 23, 2018. Through the day you get the usual stuff: Schubert, Elgar, Vivaldi. Then the 10 PM hour arrives, and  . . . KABOING:

Refuge Baljinder Sekhon Robert McCormick McCormick Percussion Group Gumboots David Bruce Carducci Quartet Julian Bliss, clarinet Aguas da Amazonia: Amazon River Philip Glass Third Coast Percussion Nihavent Semai Sokratis Sinopoulos Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello Electric Counterpoint: 3rd movement Steve Reich Kasia Kadlubowska, percussion

I must tell you that I was shocked to read this story. After protests, a radio station has decided to keep its classical music format. In Provo, Utah, no less. BYU Broadcasting has announced that it will buy an FM signal that will allow it to broadcast a bunch of educational content it planned to stuff into Classical 89/KBYU-FM, presumably obliterating the latter's popular classical music offerings. You can read the narcoleptic coma inducing deets about the deal here. The bottom line is that the outfit will purchase another radio outlet and to that signal will stream BYU, aka Brigham Young University, fare. This move will save Classical 89/KBYU's classical schedule. The Salt Lake Tribune's Scott D. Pierce has a nice piece on the protests on behalf of Classical 89. “My wife loves it," one fan exclaimed at a meeting. "She says, when we leave the home, ’Leave it on, because the plants love it, too'." To which I usually say 'yeah yeah, good luck with this.' Most radio station managements almost never renege on a format change after they announce it. Protests be damned. "We have to be realistic," they always declare, stone faced, at The Big Meeting. "Times have changed. Plus: blah blah blah and here's a lawyer and engineer to explain why you are screwed." I've even mapped out the process as the Five Stages of Format Change Grief.

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The New York Times has published a nice essay urging people to get over their fear of classical music and just enjoy the genre. The piece does not say anything that doesn't get said once every five years or so in some prominent venue. But it does say it well. Miles Hoffman notes the existence of the "Classical Music Insecurity Complex," in which people disqualify themselves from even admitting whether they like a composition or not, for fear that they lack the education to do so. The article drew a supportive letter from classical radio host Sam Goodyear:

As a musician, a music teacher and an announcer of classical music on the radio, I often get the apologetic “I don’t know anything about music” confession along with the perceived shame in such an admission. I like to point out that Handel didn’t write for musicians any more than Shakespeare wrote for playwrights or actors, or teams in the National Football League play for football players.

If their audiences were that limited, concert halls and theaters and stadiums would be nearly empty. In all cases, the aim is bringing pleasure and excitement to people, and opening doors to exploration and discovery into the bargain.