Classical Radio is Rosy in Connecticut

An absolutely wonderful post by Milton Moore about music in eastern Connecticut includes this tidbit:

We even have more classical music on the radio now. In addition to the music programming on WNPR in Hartford, WSHU in Fairfield has spread its signal eastward, WMNR in Monroe has beefed up its broadcast area, and a commercial classical station, WCRI, popped up in Westerly. You can now channel-surf as you drive, something unheard of not long ago.

It’s starting to feel like the best of times here.

You can read the post on theday.com.  Mr. Moore expresses beautifully something that’s been percolating in my head for a while.  He goes through all the amazing musical offerings in eastern Connecticut, including

…chamber music series in five separate towns, three resident opera companies along the shoreline and even a burgeoning community orchestra in New London in addition to the venerable Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra.

Plus lots of new music by young composers, community choirs, music on college campuses, and more.

It’s worth reading and thinking about, especially in the light of the ubiquitous financial struggles going on throughout the arts world.  All the gloomy reports about audiences and donations dwindling belie the reality that there are more musical options available to us than ever before.  Symphony audiences may be down, but people are not consuming less music.  We can get a huge variety on our iPods, our computers, and on the radio.  I can go to an early music concert, a symphony concert, and a chorus concert all in one weekend, plus there’s late night music everywhere in Seattle.  We have so much music here I can’t get to a fraction of it.  All genres, all price ranges, all sorts of venues.

It’s easy to grumble about your local classical station, but honestly, you have hundreds of choices online or even on your smartphone — not just stations, but whole shows from music festivals and orchestras, YouTube, tracks on artists’ websites, downloads for pennies.  We have more choices than anytime in history.  You can live in the deep forest, out on the ocean, in the tiniest town on the way to nowhere, and you can still get lots and lots of great music.

Not to mention the quality of what young musicians are doing these days.  Not only is their virtuosity astonishing but they are innovative and energetic, and they are creating new audiences themselves, without our help.  Milton Moore mentions the quartet Brooklyn Rider in his article.  I just heard them in Seattle and they reinterpreted Beethoven in a way that made me hear it as though it was composed yesterday.  Brilliant.

We also have the opportunity to reach every possible audience demographic in so many different ways.  Mr. Moore is right.  It’s not the worst of times.