Marty Ronish

Marty Ronish is an independent producer of classical music radio programs. She currently produces the Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcasts that air 52 weeks a year on more than 400 stations and online at www.cso.org. She also produces a radio series called "America's Music Festivals," which presents live music from some of the country's most dynamic festivals. She is a former Fulbright scholar and co-author of a catalogue of Handel's autograph manuscripts.

Oh, Kansas. Not Again…

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Poor Kansas has an anti-intellectual, anti-arts governor, Sam Brownback, who defied even the GOP legislature to eliminate the state arts commission.  He has the distinction of making Kansas unique.  It’s the only state in the country without a state-funded arts commission. Now Brownback has fired another shot by drastically cutting the state’s public broadcasting appropriation.  Current state funding for public broadcasting is about $2 million in Kansas, but Brownback’s budget proposal cut that to $600,000.  LJWorld.com reports that some in the state legislature tried unsuccessfully to restore $800,000 of the cuts to the budget. The … Continue Reading

Radio – Still Not Dead

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World Radio Day is coming up next week, and it’s a good time to remember why we love radio so much.  We even love getting mad at the radio.  Today I heard a classical music station offer as a premium a CD of music  they wouldn’t air on the station — Quelle  Horreur!  Choral music! An article today on the blog The Eye by Ravenna Koenig is titled “Internet Killed the Radio Star – The myth behind the decline of radio.” A panel convened at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn on January 25 to discuss … Continue Reading

Chicago Listeners Lose on Classical Cruise

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A story today in the Chicago Reader about a classical music cruise is enough to make you very sad.  Listeners of WFMT in Chicago were encouraged to sign up for a wonderful-sounding cruise: It was a classical music ocean cruise, a dreamy January escape to the Caribbean aboard a luxury vessel, with composer Roberto Sierra, rising conductor Eckart Preu, Grammy-winning chamber group the Parker Quartet, and a 50-piece orchestra providing the live soundtrack. That in itself was amazing, Dever says, but here was the corker: Bill McGlaughlin, the genial host of WFMT’s nationally … Continue Reading

Classical in Des Moines Now 24/7

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Great news in Iowa from DesMoinesRegister.com: Iowa Public Radio is now the owner of two new frequencies near Des Moines — 96.3 in Pleasantville and 105.9 in Patterson — that will allow them to increase their classical service. The result: Listeners in greater Des Moines can now tune in to classical music 24/7. The two new channels don’t break for news on “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” unlike IPR’s mostly classical 90.1 FM, which serves central Iowa from a transmission hub in Ames. But 90.1 FM may follow suit. The patching up of … Continue Reading

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