Venerable classical broadcaster Norman Pellegrini passed away early this morning in Chicago. He was 79 years old.
Pellegrini started at Chicago’s legacy station WFMT at its founding in 1951, and served as the station’s Program Director for an amazing 43 years. He was responsible for the station’s eclectic mix of classical music by day, plus comedy and folk music on The Midnight Special. Norm hated the loud advertising and ubiquitous jingles on most commercial classical stations, and he is revered for sticking to his principles and keeping the advertising on WFMT quiet and dignified.
Norm Pellegrini was the voice of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcasts internationally for nearly two decades. He’s been hosting the Chicago Lyric Opera broadcasts since the early 70’s.
On a personal note, I took over the CSO broadcasts (producing, not hosting) in 2007 and Norm had his crititiques, but they were always fair and sensible, and he had my utter respect because no one knew more about Chicago, the Symphony, and broadcasting. He never failed to be kind, supportive, and helpful. I loved his wry wit.
Farewell, Norm. You made our classical radio world a better place for a long time.
There’s going to be a memorial service on what would have been Norm’s 80th birthday, July 18th, at Mayfair Lutheran Church in Chicago.
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I think that WFMT just wrested George Preston from his perch at WNYC. George is a great asset to any Classical Music station and will cover a lot of ground.
>>RSM
R.I.P., Norman.
My first job in radio was “sprocket jockeying” open reel recordings for local broadcasts of the CSO, hosted and annotated so superbly by Norm.
When I was a junior at Northwestern in 1954, Norm Pellegrini hired me at WFMT to replace Mike Nichols (yes, that Mike Nichols). The audition was the infamous “An announcer’s lot is not a happy one…” that had been written by Mike. Norm was a mentor, instilling in me the WFMT “style,” much of what continues in my career to this day, over half a century later. Classical radio has changed over the years, but Norm kept to his principles, in spite of
critics, which at times included me. However,he had a tremendous impact on our corner of the radio world.
We and all of radio will miss him.
Robert Conrad
President
WCLV, Cleveland
Cleveland Orchestra Broadcast Service
Host: Weekend Radio
Sorry to learn of Norm’s passing. He was indeed the voice of WFMT and his CSO and CLO broadcasts were great.
It’s sad that the image of good classical radio also seems to be going, left behind in the welter of Big Radio’s quest for ever more profit and dumbing down the audience.
What’s left today? Can anyone share some good news about stations that still hold up the standard?
Bill Dunning
Santa Fe, NM