Hello,
A quick note from the Music Personnel Conference in New York City. Today was the first day of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio annual conference. Despite the difficulties in the industry that Jack wrote about yesterday, the mood is very positive here. Steve Robinson of WFMT, Laura Walker of WQXR/WNYC, and Zarin Mehta from the NY Phil were particularly upbeat about the trend in classical radio. As Steve mentioned, the top two public radio stations in the country are both classical stations — WQXR and KUSC seem to be duking it out for first place. Laura mentioned new programming, the launch on October 8th of the new WQXR/WNYC as a full time public station (WQXR was formerly commercial), and she said fundraising and listenership are going up.
The New York Philharmonic is now broadcasting worldwide, thanks to its enlightened musicians easing up on broadcast rights. WFMT is distributing music from 7 orchestras and has an abundance of dynamic programs coming out. I spoke briefly about the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which is now presenting live concert broadcasts 52 weeks a year, and six weeks at a time on-demand online and is getting ready for a new golden age with Riccardo Muti.
The volcano prevented the host of Live from the Concertgebouw from getting here, and Zarin Mehta was held up briefly by President Obama, who was here on Wall Street’s turf to talk about financial reform.
I’ll talk about individual sessions by Fred Child, Ted Libbey, Greg Sandow, and others in a day or two. We heard an absolutely phenomenal performance by violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony with pianist Akira Eguchi today. More to come… wish you were here!
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As a member now of WQXR, and still of WNYC, I can report that after what has to be called a shaky start, things seem to be going quite well.
There was great angst among the combined membership as we WNYC music listeners lost our prize programming of more modern music on the FM station, and WQXR listeners lost many of their prized on-air personalities.
But, New Music fans, listeners to 24/7 wnyc2 on line, found that we retained this jewel, renamed Q2.
WNYC and WQXR are both brave enough to maintain really terrific on line comment pages. We can comment really about anything, even individual works as shown in the on line playlists. I mean, you know, we can tell the management everything it is doing wrong, in our opinion. And, they listen. Criticism is a privilege of membership.
So, a lot of the angst came out as bitterness in the comment pages. People complained about the reduced power at 105.9 FM; people complained about lost hosts, people complained about everything. That has all ceased, and in pretty quick time.
A new Music Director has been named. This person will oversee all scheduling and music. Having experienced some directors of music at WNYC that I liked and some that I did not like, I know that there can be change about which I and other listeners may or may not be happy.
WQXR is an evolving experiment.
Q2 has seen a great deal of intelligent “modular” programming, such as “Q2 with Nadia Sirota”, a week day four hour themed segment which is streamed at noon and at midnight. With Nadia, we have had “Hope Springs Atonal”, exploring and celebrating atonality. We have had “Jacob TV’, exploring the work of Jacob Ter Veldhuis”. We have also had “Eight Days of Steve”, when Q2 put a full court press on the music of Steve Reich.
Now, at 11:00AM week days we have “Hammered”, exploring and celebrating everything pianistic, clavichord, harpsichord, and the like.
At Q2, we also have “reContact”, that is not a mis-spelling, in which Maestro Alan Gilbert and members of the NY Phil explore new music by such current composers as most recently Nico Muhly, Sean Shepherd, and Matthias Pinter.
In fact, Maestro Gilbert has recorded spots for Q2. That is really cool. But, hey, he has in his history having been a Jazz drummer. So his affinity for new music and Q2 is not really a surprise. Take that, L.A. Phil. Sorry, could not resist.
I urge anyone interested in New Music to visit the WQXR web site, click on Q2, and explore. I no longer put URL’s in my posts, some SPAM filters pick them up and kill the posts.