Walter Benjamin broadcast his third “Youth Hour” radio talk with a lament on the state of puppet show entertainment in that famous city.

“Children who want to go to puppet theater don’t have an easy time of it in Berlin,” Benjamin explained. They’ve got better deals in Munich, Paris, and Rome. But one production company still remained, he noted: Kasper Theater, which had its roots in the 18th century puppet character of that name. Kasper was a priggish smartass and the star of a puppet entertainment genre called Kaspertheater, which audiences regarded as synonymous with puppetry in general.

Before newspapers began publishing comic strips, puppet shows may have been the first entertainment to try to reach both children and adults at the same time. Benjamin reminisced on the Kasper character of the early nineteenth century, who appeared

“not only in plays that were written for him; he also sticks his saucy little nose into all sorts of big, proper theater pieces for adults. He knows he can risk it. In the most terrible tragedies nothing ever happens to him. And when the devil catches up with Faust, he has to let Kasper live, even though he’s no better behaved than his master. He’s just a peculiar chap. Or in his own words: ‘I’ve always been a peculiar fellow. Even as a youngster I always saved my pocket money. And when I had enough, you know what I did with it? I had a tooth pulled’.”

Before going any further with Benjamin’s observations on this subject, I note that KBOO-FM in Portland, Oregon broadcast a fun little puppet theater show for a spell. A 2014 episode featured an interview with a Kasper-like character named “Turner D Century,” candidate for mayor in that city.

“You have some interesting positions that I would like to talk about, ” the host began.

“What are they letting a woman into the radio studio for”? Mr. Century demanded. “This modernization has gone too far.”

Unintimidated, the host pressed on. “Well, Mr. Century, let’s just get into it then. You have a very strong position on the bridges of Portland.”

“We’re going to tear down the bridges once and for all. It was a terrible idea to build them. We’ve wound up connecting the beautiful city with the riff raff, who are free to wander the bridges any time they want and pollute the general environment . . . It’s disgusting, quite frankly.”

“Are you going to ask taxpayer- “

“No, we’re just going to blow them up with dynamite!”

Interestingly, Benjamin managed to sneak some observations about the subject of democracy into his puppet show talk. “A proper puppeteer is a despot,” he explained, “one that makes the Tsar seem like a petty gendarme.” The puppet master writes the shows, does all the art work, dresses up the puppets, and plays all the roles via their own voice. But at the same time, the puppeteer must remain wary of the powers beyond puppet land. “First from the church and [second] the authorities,” Benjamin’s radio essay warned, “because puppets can so easily mock everything without being malicious.”

Benjamin wrapped up his broadcast with summaries of various puppet routines that he found amusing. The last of these was titled “The Discovery of America,” and featured a conversation between Columbus and a “New Worlder.”

“Who goes there?” asks the New Worlder puppet. “What do you want?”

To which the Columbus puppet replies, “I call myself Columbus” and “Simply to discover.”

“And that is how America was discovered,” Benjamin’s description of the exchange summarily ended, “which is now a republic that for a number of reasons I cannot recommend. As soon as this republic gets a king, it will become a monarchy; that’s just the way it is.”

That is how Benjamin concluded his third talk, broadcast on December 7, 1929 in Berlin, less than a year before Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party won a stunning electoral victory in Germany’s Reichstag (Parliament). And this is how I am ending my latest Walter Benjamin diary entry, just days after United States President Donald Trump went on Twitter to declare that all US companies were “hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China . . . ”

This is the third entry in my Walter Benjamin Radio Diary series.

Feature image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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I have composed just two entries for my Walter Benjamin radio diary, and already I am getting lots of mail.

First came a friendly missive from Nick During, publicist at the New York Review of Books classics department. “We actually have a Walter Benjamin book coming up,” Nick wrote, “that is a collection of his writings that show how he got to the ideas found in his famous essay ‘The Storyteller’ and includes one radio piece, ‘The Lisbon Earthquake’. Would you like to see our book?”

Well, yes, I replied. So the publisher sent it to me.

The little tome in question is called The Storyteller Essays, edited and introduced by Samuel Titan and translated from German by Tess Lewis. It assembles various Benjamin texts that provide context for his famous thought piece “The Storyteller.” I do not want to say much about this essay right now, but “The Storyteller” provocatively contends that a story is best told without an explanation for its events.

Benjamin wrote:

“Every morning, news reaches us from around the globe. And yet we lack remarkable stories. This is due to the fact that no incidents any longer reach us not already permeated with explanations. In other words: almost nothing occurs to the story’s benefit anymore; instead, it all serves information. In fact, at least half of the art of storytelling consists in keeping one’s tale free of explanations.”

Titan, The Storyteller, p. 54.

What purpose does this omission of explanations serve? It allows story tellers and listeners to own the tale, to see it as organic to their very specific and individual lives. “The storyteller,” Benjamin concluded, “is the figure in which the righteous man encounters himself.” When I discuss his Lisbon earthquake radio talk in an upcoming post, I will try to show how these arguments come to life.

Then I received some correspondence from radio producer Toby Kaufmann-Buhler.

“I just found your blog posts on the Radio Survivor site about Walter Benjamin and his radio work,” Kaufmann-Buhler wrote.

“Over the past 8 months or so I’ve produced one of Benjamin’s radio plays, ‘Lichtenberg: A Cross-Section’. This is from the translation in the Radio Benjamin book; this play was never originally broadcast as he finished writing the commission just as broadcasting was taken over by the Nazi regime.

We produced this originally for an exhibition this past May at a sound art gallery in Indianapolis, Listen Hear, which also houses the LPFM station WQRT 99.1. The play aired on WQRT several times; as far as I know this was the first radio broadcast of the play in English, and possibly in any language (could be wrong, but this is based on my research). The play has also been broadcast more recently in New York’s Hudson Valley on Wave Farm’s experimental station.”

Here is my favorite moment from the play, which focuses on a committee of Moon beings’ efforts to engage in “Earth research”:

“The samples taken over the last millennia have not yielded a single case in which a human has amounted to anything. Taking this established scientific fact as a basis for our investigations, our meetings from now on will deal solely with proving that this is a result of the unhappy human condition.”

To help with this task, the committee gloms onto to the research of the German writer/humorist/scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, with whom Benjamin was apparently quite taken. But that is as far as I will go with this script. You will have to listen to the radio play to learn more.

Finally, Patricia Flanagan brought this BBC Wireless Nights sound essay to my attention. Pulp stalwart Jarvis Cocker takes us on a sultry tour of contemporary Berlin, laced with tales of the Cold War era. Not exactly a Walter Benjamin piece, but quite beautiful. I recommend a listen.

That’s my Walter Benjamin mail so far. Drop me a line at hybridhighbrow<AT>radiosurvivor.com and your Benjamin related work may wind up in my next mailbag dispatch. Thanks in advance!

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“Today I’d like to speak with you about the Berlin Schnauze,” declared Walter Benjamin on Radio Berlin in 1929. “This so-called big snout is the first thing that comes to mind when talking about Berliners.”

With this essay, I begin my Walter Benjamin radio diary, a commentary on the radio shows for children that he broadcast from 1929 to 1932 on Radio Berlin and Southwest German Radio, Frankfurt. I have written a brief backgrounder on Benjamin, just to get my little project started. A much better introduction can be heard at the BBC Archive on 4, produced by Michael Rosen. It includes conversations with scholars about Benjamin’s radio scripts and the very first English reading of them by Henry Goodman. I am quoting here from Lecia Rosenthal’s edition of the talks. And, full disclosure, I am really just going riff on these programs, think about them out loud, meditate on what they remind me of, while avoiding any grand conclusions.

Having said all that, Benjamin’s first radio essay is really interested in a certain portion of the Berlin snout: the Berlin mouth, with all its smarty pants jokes, comments, snarky observations, and cracks. It is a mouth designed to defend oneself from being pushed around in a pushy world. Here are some examples Benjamin offered, such as the tongue of this beleaguered horse-drawn cab operator.

“My God, driver,” complains his latest passenger. “Can’t you move a little faster?
“Sure thing,” responds the Berlin cabbie. “But I can’t just leave the horse all alone.”

Or this bartender, perhaps a bit exasperated with some of his drunken clientele.

“What ales you got?” demands one inebriant.
“I got gout and a bad back,” replies the barkeep.

“Berlinish,” Benjamin explained, “is a language that comes from work.” It is a way of speaking for “people who have no time, who must communicate by using only the slightest hint, glance, or half-word.”

I am very familiar with this language, because I grew up in the Berlin of the United States, otherwise known as New York City. I was raised on apocryphal tales of the smart assed waiters who presided over Manhattan’s Jewish restaurants and delicatessens. I offer these vignettes from memory. For example:

A waiter walks up to a table of four men in a Lowest East Side kosher restaurant. “What will you have, gentlemen?” he asks.
“We will start with water,” one says.
Then another adds with a slightly irritated tone: “And, waiter, in a clean glass, please.”
The attendant bows, then returns in five minutes with the water.
“Ok,” he says, “which one of you guys wanted the clean glass?”

Another example: a waiter humbly approaches four elderly women eating at a deli.
“Ladies,” he gingerly asks, “is anything all right?”

But what I find most interesting about Benjamin’s first commentary is that it offers a very selective and limited definition of the Schnauze. Wikipedia defines the snout as “the protruding portion of an animal’s face, consisting of its nose, mouth, and jaw.” Yet our radio storyteller seems decidedly uninterested in two out of three of those attributes.

Why? I can only guess, but hovering over this discussion was one of the great noses of German history, that of Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. Remembered by one historian as a “bad tempered distractible doofus” in charge of the German empire, Wilhelm appears to have been primarily concerned with two things: first, his wardrobe, which consisted of 120 colorful military uniforms, and second, the endlessly waxed and fussed over mustache which adorned his nose. It even had its own name: “Er ist Erreicht.” or “It is accomplished,” which, as you may know, also happens to be the last thing that Jesus supposedly said on the cross at Golgotha. When not preoccupied with the decoration of his own beak, Wilhelm obsessed over those of his colleagues. “Fernando naso,” he dubbed King Fernando, the ruler of Bulgaria, whose proboscis he found unacceptably pronounced.

Therefore, I am not surprised that the young Walter Benjamin, already so focused on language, class, and democracy, stuck to the mouth and left the nose, with all its autocratic overtones, to others.

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A week ago Old First Concerts in San Francisco sponsored a sold out performance of the music of Julius Eastman. Hybrid Highbrow has discussed Eastman’s history and significance before. I wish that I could have attended this event, but my friend Sherry Gendelman, who hosts the Piano program on KPFA, went and sent me her notes:

“There were four grand pianos on stage,  three of which were lent to the church for the performance by R. Kassman Pianos of Berkeley. Julius Eastman’s music is not traditionally melodic, though it is infused with many classical influences. It is atonal, assaultive, percussive and mind boggling. The first three, short pieces, were religious in theme. ‘Touch Him When,’ ‘Our Father,’ and ‘Hail Mary.’ They were unique in their conception, particularly ‘Hail Mary,’ which consisted of a performer speaking the Hail Mary prayer over and over through a megaphone, accompanied by piano. I can only imagine what Eastman suffered at the hands of organized religion.

After intermission there was performance of his piece ‘Crazy Nigger,’ composed 1979. It involved all four pianos. It began with just four pianists. The program indicated that there would be additional players at some point in the piece. I listened with my eyes closed. I heard in the beginning the brilliance and classical training that Eastman had. The music also spoke of what it feels like to be called “crazy”  and “nigger” for your entire life. I was so lost in the music that when I opened my eyes was startled to see at least two or four more people surrounding each piano and banging out their parts and hearts. I was startled by the number of people onstage and the cacophony of noise and music that they made, all from Eastman’s score. When the piece was over the audience erupted with applause and cheers. I’m really happy that I attended.”

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One of the things I like about G-town radio is that it starts every morning with jazz programming. The internet community station broadcasts to the Germantown section of Philadelphia. From Monday to Saturday the jazz streams from six to nine am, and to ten am on Sundays.

“Get out of bed mix featuring classic jazz, mellow pop and downtempo electronica,” the station’s program schedule explains.

I don’t know why, but jazz in the AM makes me feel optimistic and hip at the same time. I drive into work and there is a ballad by Dexter Gordon or something similar, and I feel like the world is a loving, rational place, even though it isn’t. I feel like I am connected to everyone around me, even if I am not.

“If music is a place, Jazz is the city,” says the writer Vera Nazarian. I’m with that. Speaking of cities, G-town is doing an interesting weekly series on the future of its environs.

“The first eight-episode season focused on local government, and the second honed in on the neighborhood’s network of small businesses,” an article in Billy Penn notes. “The current leg of the show has a broader scope. Each episode will explore a different Germantown attribute, from the neighborhood’s history to its modern crime, poverty and housing inequity.”

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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.

Since then Levine has operated classical, jazz, and even country music stations. I am most familiar with his K-MOZART outlet, available at FM 105.1, via HD, and online. He predicts that terrestrial radio will last another “15 to 20 years.”

“It’s free, it’s local, it’s live,” Levine told Variety, “and it’s the only medium that deals with your community.”

Levine’s Mt. Wilson Broadcasters company is a not infrequent correspondent with the Federal Communications Commission. In this 2017 broadside, he urged the FCC not to accept proposals that would lead to further consolidation on the AM/FM bands, referring specifically to recommendations coming from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).

Levine writes:

“Separate and apart from failing to provide documentation in support of the alleged adverse impact on competition, the NAB filings ignore the multiple ‘downsides’ resulting from group owner consolidation,

1. less diversity of viewpoint ownership (evidenced by substantially fewer radio owners- the 39% decline in radio ownership between 1996 and 2006), which will be further reduced if caps are eliminated, increased or maintained at the existing limits;

2. less meaningful localism (evidenced by out-of-market centrally located studios serving distant designated areas, Appendix III, Mt. Wilson Addendum);

3. less competition between group owners and independent radio owners (evidenced by the decline in radio ownership). While the number of stations remain relatively constant, the number of radio owners consistently is reduced – the ultimate result, less competition, less diversity;

4. additional layoffs resulting from consolidation.”

When not giving the FCC a piece of his mind, Levine has been dating via match.com, according to the Variety article. “There was one I liked, but she turned out to be a little meshugge,” he told Trakin. “She was attractive and intelligent, but she’s converted to Hinduism and wanted me to also. Then I found out she was spiking my meals with herbs. She kept telling me Big Pharma’s killing us, but if it weren’t for Big Pharma, we wouldn’t be here at all.” Whatever is keeping Saul here, it deserves our thanks.

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The holiday season approaches, and as has been the case since 1992, revelers will soon gather in a host of cities and perform Phil Kline’s composition Unsilent Night. They will each download one of four parts of the piece and play it on some mobile device as they stroll down evening streets. Anything from a iPod to a boombox serves the music’s purposes.

Here’s how the performance went in Greenwich Village, New York not too many years ago.

You can skip over to this website to download a part and find an Unsilent Night near you. As the international schedule indicates, the fun has already concluded in some cities, like Athens, Georgia, but the Puget Sound area will soom serve up the piece twice, once in Tacoma, then in Seattle.

Meanwhile, since I am woefully delinquent in keeping up with my Hybrid Highbrow podcast, I have cooked up some Spotify Hybrid Highbrow playlists. Behold one for the holidays. I’m not done with it yet, but enjoy . . .

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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.”

Here is her rendition of the West Side Story song “Somewhere.” Quite beautiful.

I am increasingly confident that there is a place for everyone, especially on the radio. The other day in response to Jennifer’s annual Alice’s Restaurant radio survey we received a response from Al Gordon of WJPR (1640) in New Jersey. The station broadcasts a hybrid format: “Jewish all day and oldies all night.”

“I play Arlo every Thanksgiving on my station at Midnight, 4AM and noon,” Gordon wrote to us.

Here is the WJPR schedule from Monday through Thursday.

12 Midnight   Overnight oldies/Babalu
5AM              Daf Yomi/Rabbi Elefant
6AM              Gordon-in-the-Morning
10AM            Midday Music/Chaya
2PM              Afternoon Music/Chaim
6PM              Silent Mike
7PM              Talkline Communications Network Proramming
Tuesday        Rabbi Yaakov Spivak
Wednesday  Silk Road To Jerusalem with Chief Bucharian Rabbi Yitzchak Yehoshua

8PM             Talkline/Zev Brenner
9PM              Oldies/Babalu

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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.

Here are three more pieces that I think very successfully open a Sunday morning classical music program.

The overture to Russlan and Ludmilla by Mikhail Glinka. Some Russian composers, like Dimitri Shostakovich, specialize in dark sarcastic music; others, like Borodin, exude optimism. This Glinka piece, the opening to his rarely performed opera, definitely falls into the optimism category. In contrast to the Vaughn Williams score, it will roust up your listeners and inspire them to accomplish Great Things. While I was a kid growing up in New York City, the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History started its shows with Russlan. There is just something cheerfully cosmic about the piece.

Bela Bartok’s Third Piano Concerto, second movement, “Adagio religioso.” Bartok wrote this composition at the very end of his days. One of his students finished the piece after he died in 1945. The hauntingly beautiful slow movement begins with a homage to a Beethoven string quartet, then features orchestral imitations of the birds the composer heard from his hospital bed. It is a musical essay that invites us to meditate and be grateful for our lives.

PS: Yes, I believe in playing single movements of symphonies on radios shows. I know. Blasphemy.

Alan Hovhaness, Symphony Number 2, “Mysterious Mountain,” first movement.  Hovhaness composed this work in 1955 at the request of the conductor Leopold Stokowski. The rhythmically complex first movement begins with a gorgeous prayer intoned by strings, followed by celesta and harp episodes, then a beautiful oboe solo, then back to the prayer. It is perfect for Sunday morning.

Meanwhile the staff of KSQD-FM continues to fundraise and tackle obstacles in pursuit of a broadcasting date. You can read about some of the hairy details here, but I think a comment from one of the project’s movers and shakers, Rachel Goodman, summarizes the situation: “There’s a lot of legal twists and turns, and huge bureaucracies involved. It’s like pushing a boulder up a hill, and then you run into a bigger boulder.”

In any event, when it all comes through, there will be lots of interesting music on the weekends. Former KUSP-FM host Joe Truskot sent me an email the other day with details on some of the plans:

“My fellow hosts and I are very happy to bring locally produced, classical music shows back to the communities of the Monterey Bay. All four of us (Nicholas Mitchell, Jim Emdy, Chris Smith and me) were part of the KUSP classical music programs and are passionate about music.

It will be a different listening audience and will require some programming changes. I was a sub for all the classical music programs on KUSP so I understand the various niches that we occupied, but we were all evening shows devoted to particular genres. My show was 20-21, music of the 20th century and today.

My new show “Music of the Masters” won’t have those restrictions but it will have to jive with what listeners are doing on Saturday mornings. I find it exciting to match music with a “rise and shine” attitude. I’ll also have to keep an eye out for news, traffic, times, and weather. As far as selections, I’m amassing a large collection of works which will capture attention immediately. It’s been fun to go back to my college days (when I really got hooked on classical music and classical music radio) and recall which pieces grabbed a hold of me and wouldn’t let go: Tchaikovsky “Capriccio Italien,” Ravel “La Valse,” Liszt’s “Liebestraum,” Glinka’s Overture to “Russlan and Ludmilla,” Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz” and on and on and on.

One other goal of mine is to create programs which offer large orchestral works, chamber ensembles, lieder, choral works, and music from dance, opera, movies, and video games. I love themed programs and being challenged to assemble selections that fit the theme – all with the purpose of listeners enjoying the show and staying tuned in. For example, FRESH WATER MUSIC featuring Liadov’s “The Enchanted Lake,” Ferdé Grofé’s “Niagara Suite,” Smetana’s “The Moldau,” Schubert’s and Barber’s “Music to be Performed on Water,” Druckman’s “Reflections on the Nature of Water,” and, of course, excerpts from Handel’s Water Music.”

If you want to help make this happen sooner rather than later, The Squid is still in fund-raising mode. More information on the project as I get it.

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Yes, Grimes Poznikov has a Facebook group where this photo and others can be found: https://www.facebook.com/Automatic-Human-Jukebox-Grimes-Poznikov-165205406850071/

The San Francisco Chronicle took me back a decade or two with this item about a homage to the late Grimes Poznikov and his Automatic Human Jukebox. From the 1970s through the 1990s Poznikov played his horn inside an elaborately got up used refrigerator cart. He began his career with a repertoire of about two dozen tunes. You picked a song, plugged in your money, and got your music delivered through the, well, box.

In the 1990s his presentations became more free-associative, so to speak, as per this YouTube.

Poznikov died in 2005 from booze, mental illness, and living on the street. Now he has a decorated porta potti in his honor, made to look like his then popular box.

Moondog; from Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moondog

This brings me to one of my more dubious claims to fame. I knew Moondog. Yes, that Moondog, the composer, musical instrument inventor, poet, and philosopher. The very same Moondog who stood silently in his Odin outfit around midtown Manhattan for many years.

Back in the 1970s I worked relatively close to his various haunts. I would sometimes sit next to him and eat my lunch in his vicinity. “How’s it going Moondog?” I would ask. Pretty good, he would reply. In truth, I don’t remember the exact response, but it was close to that. We wouldn’t say much more because Moondog decidedly was not into talking. But I somehow convinced myself that we had a relationship.

Moondog’s real name was Louis Thomas Hardin. I am reminded of him because my wife and I visited the travelling Peter Hujar photography exhibit yesterday, which included a Moondog photo. It was only years later that I learned that Hardin successfully sued none other than Alan Freed for infringing on his name, as per Freed’s “Moondog Rock and Roll Matinee.”

Here is a portion of Hardin’s marvelously syncopated “Moondog Symphony.”

While we are on the subject of dogs, this Youtube is making the rounds. It reminds me that no matter how aroused a canine may become by an unusual sound, in this case that of a young lady practicing “Frère Jacques” on her flute, it will not allow the disturbance to interrupt its rest. The Nap Must Go On.

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About six weeks ago I bought a persimmon colored Honda Fit. I love it. The car replaced a stick-shift Honda Civic with which I awkwardly navigated the hills of San Francisco for fourteen years. No more of that pseudo-James Dean nonsense. My Fit has automatic transmission and effortlessly putters up the Cool Gray City’s worst inclines without breaking a sweat. It also came with a free introductory subscription to SiriusXM satellite radio which I sampled and found, somewhat to my embarrassment, that I greatly enjoy.

I say embarrassment because I have been writing about SiriusXM in one capacity or another for years. A decade ago I covered the controversial merger of the two companies for Ars Technica. I also included a section about satellite radio in my book Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium. But I never really listened to SiriusXM that much, until now.

My Honda Fit SiriusXM interface.

What won me over is that the service has concatenated a gaggle of music channels into a section that the panel on my SiriusXM interface calls “Jzz/Stndrd/Clscl.” These channels, which I can easily toggle through while driving the Fit, include a Metropolitan Opera channel, a show tunes channel, a 40s big band channel, about half a dozen jazz channels, and a symphony hall classics channel. Basically, this covers almost all the elements of what I call “hybrid highbrow” music, save a world music component.

I wish there was more classical fare (a classical soloists channel would be grand). And, as I just mentioned, a world music channel that aired Indian ragas and Egyptian oud ensembles would complete the concept. But the hosts are full of enthusiasm and charm and their selections are first rate. So I have to admit that I’m hooked . . .

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Of late I have been trying to keep track of storefronts that play classical music in San Francisco. They make for excellent locations for classical music lovers to loiter. So far I have found two, briefly videoed in this Youtube clip.

Obviously there’s much to lament in this practice. Andrew Mellor, writing for the Rhinegold music publisher website, notes with sadness the spectacle of genius assigned the task of making various places unpalatable to “certain people” (aka, the homeless and destitute). Mellor is talking about the London transit system in his essay:

“When I lived in London, Mozart’s last symphonies were a favourite at my local tube station where they were piped through the public address system in order to dissuade certain people from sticking around for longer than was absolutely necessary. So there’s a new role for three of the most astonishing works to have flowed from the most dazzling musical genius the world has produced: the creation of an environment in which people feel uncomfortable (though to be fair, as an industry we were excelling at that objective long before Transport for London got involved).”

But there is one saving grace, at least for me. I happen to be very fond of hanging around on the street and just talking to whoever comes by. It’s a particularly fun thing to do if some nice loudspeakers are piping out Vivaldi or Telemann or a similar composer (these services seem to favor the Baroque, Rococo, and Classical periods [eg Mozart and Haydn]. I am not sure why). There’s a pawn shop in the Mission District that broadcasts classical pieces. So sometimes I get a taco and hang out in front there and chat with other classical fans who linger for the music.

If you know of any other venues, please tweet me at @matthewlasar and I’ll add them to my video. Do try to get a quick clip with your mobile device.

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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.

As noted, in 1949 the Bureau began surveillance of Bernstein and his activities. A memorandum to its director J. Edgar Hoover noted his alleged involvement with groups like the Civil Rights Congress and National Negro Congress. The Communist Party launched the latter organization  to build coalitions of black and white workers and intellectuals. “Leonard Bernstein has been connected, affiliated, or in some manner associated with the following organizations,” the memo observes (see the screenshot from the file below). The vaguely worded comment even drew skepticism from an FBI functionary who later reviewed it. “This phraseology means nothing . . . ” someone wrote at the bottom of the document.

A snippet of Leonard Bernstein’s FBI file.

That did not stop the Bureau from staying on Bernstein’s tail, publishing a lengthy internal expose of Bernstein’s political activities from 1945 through 1949. These included involvement with anti-fascist, pro-civil rights, and free speech groups associated with the Communist Party during those years. Mostly Bernstein’s name appeared on various endorsement lists, the report notes, or he attended a testimonial dinner for some civil rights activist, or he consented to dedicate a performance to “free Spain,” or he participated in a National Negro Congress talent contest. The FBI even took an interest in Bernstein’s two month stay in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1950.

By 1953 Bernstein’s passport had been revoked, forcing him to submit an affidavit assuring the government that he had never been a member of the CP. The FBI noted this action in a 1953 memo titled “Security Matter, Fraud Against Government.” But Bernstein’s assertion was true. In fact, the conductor had given his name and energies to many non-communist front groups, from Planned Parenthood to the United Jewish Appeal. Eventually he won his passport back, and became the music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

My favorite portion of Bernstein’s FBI file is a letter that the Bureau obtained in which the Shell Oil Company, then a prominent educational television sponsor, came to his defense. Some anti-communist zealot had written to Shell objecting to his work. In 1963 one H.F. Brown of Shell’s public relations department responded:

“We feel that we are doing a very real service to the young people of this country in sponsoring on television from New York the Young People’s Concerts under the direction of Mr. Bernstein, who in our opinion is not only a gifted conductor but one of the great teachers of our day.

We appreciate your concern and your very honest reasons for writing us. We would, however, like to suggest that in this instance you are being misguided by incorrect information.

The final concert in this year’s Young People’s Concert will be telecast in your area on March 8th. We do hope you will tune in.”

Bernstein’s FBI file concludes with his brief support of the Black Panther Party in 1970 and association with the anti-war activist Daniel Berrigan. The dossier ends as it begins, with a lengthy timeline of his life’s political work, going all the way back the 1940s. “This summary has been prepared for use at the seat of government and is not suitable for dissemination,” the FBI document warns.

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Second Inversion radio has an interesting interview with pianist Nadia Shpachenko. She has a new album that includes a composition by Peter Yates called “Epitaphs and Youngsters.” The piece requires output from a “singing pianist,” who, among other tasks, meditates on W.C. Fields’ famous comment that “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”

Apparently Fields hoped that this statement would become his epitaph. At least that’s what he said in the magazine Vanity Fair in 1925. He also alluded to this desire in another movie, to wit:

Hangman: Have you any last wish?
WC: Yes, I’d like to see Paris before I die. (pause) Philadelphia will do.

In any event, from the Second Inversion snippet included in the interview, it seems like a nice work, nicely performed.

Meanwhile I love the soundtrack to the TV show Cowboy Beebop and am glad that Austin, Texas classical station KFMA has published a retrospective of sorts on its author, Yoko Kanno. Beebop’s opening track brings back memories of the anthems of TV shows from the 1950s, most notably Henry Mancini’s theme to Peter Gunn:

But Kanno is full of surprises, most notably this Faure-like chorus that morphs into a Chrissy Hynde style tune:

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Today is National Underwear Day, and radio station WWOZ-FM of New Orleans notes the occasion with a terrific video of the city’s Nat’l Underwear Day celebration from 2016:

The New Orleans National Underwear Day Parade rolls again Sunday at 7p, starting and ending at 3610 Toulouse pic.twitter.com/7VoQW2tqk9

— WWOZ 90.7 FM (@wwoz_neworleans) August 5, 2018

It should be observed that underwear unites almost all musical genres. Bela Bartok wore underwear. So did Sarah Vaughan. So did the legendary tango singer Carlos Gardel. I could go on and on. Of course it’s possible (I’m imagining) that some music legends skipped wearing underwear on occasion (see Ludwig von Beethoven and Roland Kirk). But their negligence represents the exception that proves the rule. So Happy National Underwear Day to hybrid highbrowists one and all.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun Times has a moving farewell to retiring music host Carl Grapentine, who served up the drive time classics on station WFMT-FM for 22 years.

“He melded the familiar with the esoteric, offering mini-lectures on the history and origins of the music,” reminisces columnist Laura Washington. “Carl would play a lovely piece, then tell me about it. I would scribble notes. There are scraps of paper about beautiful music are all over my apartment, stuffed in drawers, files, and sofa cushions.”

Chicago is arguably the second most important city in the USA for classical music (New York City is the first). It is where  Theodore Thomas established himself as the USA’s first major classical symphony conductor. Thomas also reinvented the idea of classical music in the 1890s, redefining the genre as the “serious” musical form.

That legacy is still with us. Laura Washington praises Grapentine for the accessibility of his broadcasts. “I am no classical music expert,” she writes.  “Carl Grapentine made me a classical music lover.” Gilded Age Chicago played a major role in promoting the idea (or at least the feeling) that you had to be an “expert” to enjoy classical music. I’m not sure that that’s a bragging point, but it is a historical fact.

Grapentine will be replaced by Dennis Moore on Monday. Hopefully Mr. Moore will continue to rescue listeners from the delusion that they have to possess some kind of expertise to love Debussy.

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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

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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.

“So that was in my mind and I thought, it is going to be a problem later in the piece, so maybe I can do something that will be helpful. So I said to the concert master, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.’ I walked off the stage and got two very big handfuls of these cough drops. I came back and said something to the audience like ‘I just happen to have a bunch of cough drops . . . ‘”

Full disclosure: my wife Sharon and I attended an MTT concert last year at the San Francisco Symphony. Thomas came on stage to make some preparatory remarks about a new composition commissioned by the organization. I started coughing just a little towards the end of his talk. We were sitting in the front left of the hall. As the conductor made his exit, it sure looked like he was giving me the hairy eyeball. Back then I thought that maybe I was being a bit paranoid. Not now. Happily Sharon had a cough drop handy and saved me from a celebrity beating.

This is all well and good. Who am I to argue with famous musicians handing out pharynx calming sweets to subscription audiences? But I hope that this doesn’t mean that classical radio deejays will stop playing records in which audience members cough. That would entail, for example, banning one of my favorite live Vladimir Horowitz  performances, that of him playing his heart out to Robert Schumann’s beautiful piano suite “Kinderszenen” (Scenes from Childhood).

Listen to this Youtube of the rendition, which is queued up to a section in which Horowitz concludes the most beloved episode of the piece, titled “Traumerei” (Reverie), and begins playing the next section, “Am Kamin” (At the Fireside).

As you can hear, several patrons in the back of the hall cut loose with a barrage of coughing that they simply cannot control. Yet Horowitz continues his marvelous, poetic playing as if recording in an air tight studio. Attention all classical radio presenters: don’t deny your listeners these wonderful slices of musical life because of a few tickled throats!

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I recommend a visit to Second Inversion radio for their wonderful video of the Third Coast Percussion ensemble’s new soundtrack to the 1966 Canadian short feature titled Paddle to the Sea. It is quite something. The musicians deploy skittering wood blocks and water-filled wine glasses to create a beautiful nature-filled sound environment.

Paddle to the Sea was (and still is) about an indigenous boy who carves a little canoe steered by an elder, and then sets it on its way. The documentary follows the mini-canoe’s adventures as it treks from Lake Superior to the ocean, tangling with frogs, squirrels, ice floes, fishermen, and small children. It was based on Holling C. Holling’s 1941 book with the same name.

Paddle to the Sea , Bill Mason, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

Meanwhile I am also reading with interest a San Diego Tribune story that briefly focuses on the vibrant life and sudden death of “smooth jazz” radio. The article focuses on the flute work of Nestor Torres and his influences, among them the brilliant flute and saxophonist James Moody, who died in San Diego in 2010.

“Before the national smooth jazz radio format began to implode nearly a decade ago,” author George Varga notes, “Torres regularly received airplay on such stations, including San Diego’s KIFM (which shifted to pop vocal-dominated programming in early 2011 and now plays ‘classic hits’).” Apparently in 2011 a San Diego smooth jazz festival cancelled itself due to lack of interest.

“It’s very ironic,” Torres is quoted as saying. “The smooth jazz radio format is dead, when — in fact — there is still a smooth jazz audience. So the format is far from over. It’s alive and well.”

Indeed, there are quite a number of Internet based smooth jazz stations out there, such as Smooth Jazz Florida and, well, Smoothjazz.com. But, now that I bother to notice, there’s an entire thread at Radio Discussions titled What Killed Smooth Jazz on the FM band. Prominent among the theories: that the format, which often softly plays in the background, could not properly send encoding signals to Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (later acquired by Nielsen).

Others contend that it was just Smooth Jazz’s time to die:  “The music got old, boring, and predictable. It became wallpaper music, like beautiful music in the early 80s. At one time, that format was getting big ratings everywhere. Then it dropped off the face of the earth. That was a long time before PPM. It has nothing to do with Nielsen. It just happens.”

What I find interesting are the influences that Torres cites, James Moody among them. Here’s a Youtube of Moody’s phenomenal rendition of “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” from Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. It’s not a very smooth jazzy kind of thing, but it is gorgeous.

Last week I wrote a rather whiny piece about the unfortunate recent fate of two jazz oriented radio stations. I can’t really say that I mourn the death of smooth jazz on FM radio, but I’m glad it is still treading water somewhere. There’s even a smooth jazzish version of Bach’s Overture #3 that I like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oxQLZcpSN0

To steal a phrase from West Side Story, somewhere a place for smooth jazz.

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Oh for goodness sake would you people stop killing jazz radio already? You know who you are. And we know who you are, too.

In North Carolina there’s Fayetteville State College’s Board of Trustees, who sold WFSS-FM back in 2015. Of late somebody wrote into the Fayetteville Observer and asked: “The Fayetteville State University public radio station WFSS still comes on, but why did they stop the jazz section of its programming?”

Here’s the newspaper’s answer:

“WFSS, which broadcast from the campus of Fayetteville State, had featured jazz as the core format since its inception in the late 1970s. But an eclectic mix of formats were blended into the lineup, including bluegrass, gospel, blues, and African and Latin music.

Problem was, the station was losing money, operating on a deficit of $60,000 to $100,000 a year, according to Jon Young, who was provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs at the time.”

Until the sale is approved by the Federal Communications Commission, the University of North Carolina’s WUNC is streaming on the signal via a Local Management Agreement.  So out went the jazz format and everything else, the deficit of which cost FSC around the same as a full time faculty member. Guess that was just one professor too many.

Meanwhile Canada’s Globe and Mail reports that Toronto’s JAZZ.FM.91 removed four hosts last week, including two “high profile” personalities. The operation let five employees and two contractors, all told. A spokesperson for the station said that the changes did not have to do with a recent sexual harassment and bullying investigation.

From The Globe:

“The departures follow the exits of Garvia Bailey, a former morning show host whose disappearance from the air in April prompted questions from listeners, and Dani Elwell, who left last year. The station has not told listeners the reasons for the women’s departures.”

Gah.

In happier news, James Cridland has a fun story about how to run a fully functional DIY Internet classical radio station for around $100. Attention all jazz programmers . . .

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Lorraine Gordon

Lorraine Gordon has died. She operated the world’s premier jazz club, the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, for almost 30 years. Gordon ran the place like clockwork. The New York Times obituary gives you the picture:

Ms. Gordon, often nursing a glass of vodka, presided over the scene with a personal brand of tough love. She played her role like the wisecracking star of a black-and-white movie, and she helped make the Vanguard an unfailing fountain of late-night music. But she was also a hard-driving manager; she had to be.

“We open at 3,” she once said, describing the daily grind. “Deliveries come in, the phones are ringing, the roof is leaking, there’s something always going wrong, and then musicians come to rehearse. Every Tuesday night there’s a new group, so every six nights there’s a changeover. Sound checks have to be done. Instruments have to be brought in or taken out.”

Back when I lived in New York City I went to The Vanguard from time to time. I’ll never forget listening to pianist Bill Evans perform to a hushed, reverential audience. Gordon was also a presence on Greater New York City radio.  WBGO-FM in Newark, New Jersey (where Gordon was born) has revived a 2006 interview with her. It’s a remarkable discussion that covers her early years in Newark, her marriage to Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records, her promotion of the celebrated jazz artist Thelonious Monk, her time in Mexico, and her subsequent marriage and collaboration with Max Gordon, founder of the Vanguard.

In addition, NPR’s Lara Pellegrinelli has a touching remembrance of Gordon, posted at WBUR-FM in Boston. The piece also reflects on her lonely championing of Monk. “He came here [the Vanguard] and played,” Gordon says in the interview, “and there was nobody here except Monk, the group on the stage, and me and a couple of my friends.” But she did not give up on him, doggedly carousing reporters to pay attention to his genius. Years later I attended a Monk concert at Cooper Union in Manhattan. He had obviously reached the end of his days, but the auditorium was still packed. Gordon can justly take some credit for his fame.

NPR has archived some of The Village Vanguard’s more recent events. Here is the Pellegrinelli piece, well worth a listen:

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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

Interestingly, the Federal Communications Commission’s safe harbor hour also begins at 10 pm. That’s when broadcasters can air “indecent” and “profane” material through 6 am. And, apparently, that’s also when Minnesota classical radio lovers can listen to Steven Reich and Philip Glass.

Speaking of the opposite of profanity, yes, I watched and listened to cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason wow the guests at the Royal Wedding with his moving performances of pieces by Fauré, Schubert, and a beautiful work generally attributed to Theresia von Paradis, Sicilienne.

What is it that makes cellos the perfect musical instrument for wedding celebrations? I just asked my wife, Sharon Wood, and she suggested that the lower range mellowness of the cello (as opposed to the violin) sets a nice tone for these events. There’s also an intimate physicality to the cello that other instruments, including the piano, lack.

Believe it or not, there’s a wonderful wedding/cello scene in an otherwise profane movie: The Hangover, Part II.

This performance of a Bach Cello Suite at Stu’s wedding celebration in Thailand really sets up the arc of the film: a  protagonist’s desire for a normal life, punctuated by occasional classy moments like this one, followed by the endless cavalcade of chaos that we expect of the Hangover comedy franchise. We seem to be getting that everywhere else these days as well. Good thing that cellos are still around.

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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.

I wonder how many more centuries this dilemma will last. It really does feel like some kind of eternal condition that will never go away. Hoffman places some of the blame on stuffy complicated lectures presented before concerts and incomprehensible program notes. I think it’s got a lot to do with how isolated classical music has become. It mostly gets played in classical music halls and on classical music radio stations and rarely anywhere else. Even radio stations that play both classical music and jazz rarely play them together in the program or set. There is this overwhelming sense of separateness to classical music, resulting in the same serial discussion about how to get people to listen to it happening decade after decade after decade . . .

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If you, perhaps a regular Radio Survivor reader, have not seen The Death of Stalin yet, please know that it is a radio movie.  This is not an endorsement, just an observation. The tragic-comic film begins by concatenating a possibly real or possibly apocryphal radio story that took place during the Second World War with Stalin’s last days, which occurred almost a decade later.

Maria Yudina

The radio story involves an alleged 1944 performance of Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto, the solo portion served up by the pianist Maria Yudina. Soviet radio broadcast the rendition, which Stalin heard. He then called and asked for a copy of the interpretation. The problem, of course, was that it had been aired live. But there was a saying in those days: “If it didn’t actually happen, it should have.” So the station’s terrified staff rounded up the orchestra and Yudina and they labored through the night until they had a suitable black vinyl recording of the piece. Functionaries dutifully delivered the record to Stalin the next morning.

In the movie, this remarkable radio moment is taken up the elevator of time to 1953. The movie has the very religious Yudina include an eloquent hostile note in the recording, which Stalin reads and then collapses from the stroke that would soon kill him. In fact, Yudina may have written a courageous statement against Stalin, but when she received The Stalin Prize, presumably earlier. It supposedly read: “Day and night I will pray for forgiveness for the monstrous atrocities that you have perpetuated against your people. I reject the Stalin prize, and am sending the money for the renovation of a church and the salvation of your soul.”

But here is the problem with this frightening classical radio yarn, it comes from Solomon Volkov’s book “Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostokovich.” Speaking personally, I find convincing the scholar Laurel Fay’s contention that the tome is a fraud. But here’s the problem with that. It’s also possible that portions of the volume come from actual events, just not events told by the composer Shostakovich, but recounted from other sources. So here we have a movie that smooshes fact with fiction based on a “memoir” that some scholars say smooshes fact with fiction.

I conclude this post with a historian’s obvious question: has anyone tried to track this radio event down via one of its supposed participants? A member of the orchestra? The conductor? I am going to look into this in my voluminous non-existent free time. Until then, I have to admit, it’s a very juicy story, one that, dare I say it, may not have actually happened, but should have (not that I would have wanted to live through it, of course).

In any event, one thing I know for sure. Maria Yudina really did perform and record Mozart’s 23rd Piano Concerto. Enjoy.

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Good grief is there ever a lot of crossover classical stuff going on, much of it in the United Kingdom. Let’s see . . .

The Classic FM online service is teaming up with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and PlayStation to present a show titled PlayStation in Concert, billboarding “the very best in video game music.”

The RPO and the City of London Choir will serve up renditions of the soundtracks to: The Last of Us, The Last Guardian, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, LittleBigPlanet, and Horizon Zero Dawn

It all happens at the Royal Albert Hall on May 30. Speaking personally, I’ve tried for years to get into video games, but every time I play one I think, “gee, I could be practicing Bartok or Chopin on the piano right now,” and that’s the end of that. Still, I almost always love the scores to these things. How grand it would be to attend this concert. If you go, send a review to @hybridhighbrow.

Meanwhile I am following the Nonclassical music label out of London, which endeavors to get contemporary classical music performed in clubs on selected evenings. From the group’s About page:

“The success of the night partly stems from the fact that it presents classical as if it were rock or electronic music. Bands play through the pub’s PA, everyone has a pint in their hand and perhaps most importantly there are DJs playing throughout the night. Even the most sceptical visitors to the club can’t help but be stimulated by being so close to the high-quality musicianship presented at Nonclassical. Classical music can be part of everyone’s lives and this night is part of rediscovering its relevance.”

The outfit has a sample playlist on Spotify. I am particularly enjoying “Mohave Desert” by Floating Points.

Back here in the USA radiomilwaukee.org is promoting Between Two Worlds, a merger of folk and new American classical. That’s happening at the Helen Zelazo Center for the Performing Arts in Milwaukee on March 24. Here’s a sample of one of the artists’ songs:

So much great stuff. I want to get it all on one radio station! Someday . . .

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DJ McSchmormac at his disks

I have started something called the “Hybrid Highbrow Network.” It is at this point mostly only a figment of my imagination, a matrix of people who don’t know they’re in the matrix  but who mix classical, jazz, showtunes, world music and whatever into whatever comes out the other end, radio-wise. Undaunted by the fictional nature of my project (so far), I recently put out a call to various likeminded friends, eg., “what are you doing these days?”  DJ McSchmormac, who does the Grammophoney Baloney show at KPOO-FM in San Francisco, replied with the following:

You’ll be sorry you asked – on Monday I only played three classical things – Stravinsky on piano with Samuel Dushkin on violin performing part of Duo Concertante – some Beethoven piano sonata by A. Schnabel, and because it was Martin Luther King Day – Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, done by a Japanese orchestra from the 1930s.

Did I tell you about this amazing feature that’s been part of the program for quite some while? It’s called “Three From Thirty Three at Three Thirty Three.” That’s where I play three recordings from the year 1933 when it’s 3:33 pm.

Anyway.
Here’s a recent development – I picked up a nice reissue of Billie Holiday the complete Commodore Masters – when she wanted to record Strange Fruit in 1939 – Columbia didn’t want her to record it on their label so they put her contract on temporary hiatus (the guy that wrote Strange Fruit adopted Julius & Ethel Rosenberg’s kids) she released 16 tracks on the Commodore label – those are the masters, one session has an unusually small accompanying ensemble of just piano, bass & drums.

Anyway – I was listening to these and thinking “this is all great top notch stuff” and decided the best approach would to play the whole thing in chronological order, but subject to the three-hourly limit on songs by the same artists and/or from the same release – which happens to be three or four in this case – but I went with three instead of four because that’s what KPOO thinks it is – so over the course of 6 weeks I played three different Billie Holiday tracks from the Commodore Masters each week – so I had people saying they were enjoying the serialized Billie Holiday, and when it was over they said they missed it, so I decided to take a serialized approach to more stuff, I want it to be stuff I’ve never played on the program before, and stuff that’s worth playing, I think it’s beneficial to the listener because they’re hearing me play something new, and I think it MIGHT be beneficial to me – insofar as maybe I don’t have to put as much mental energy into compiling a playlist – but it’s possible I might end up having to put MORE mental energy into the selections, to find stuff that’s compatible with the serialized selections.

I’m aiming to have up to 8 different releases in serial form all at the same time – this will constitute about half of the entire playlist, the other half of the playlist will be stuff to thread the serialized selections together. I don’t want to do more than 8 becuase then there’s no room left for my mixing skills, and I might as well just be Pandora or Spotify at that stage.

At the moment I’ve started serializing Sister Rosetta Tharpe starting from her 1944 session with the Sam Price Trio – these sessions in particular show why she’s a rock & roll pioneer and why her recent induction into the R&R Hall of Fame was so long overdue.

Also I’ve started serialzing some late 1929-1930 recordings of Henry Red Allen & His New York Orchestra – remastered by the legendary John R.T. Davies.

From now until the end of February I’m concentrating on African American artists, I’ll be adding Clifford Hayes, CHick Webb, John Kirby Sextet, James P. Johnson, I’m not sure what else.

After February, some of the classical serialized selections I’m planning include the complete Bartok Quartets by the Julliard Quartet from 1950, the 1930s solo piano recordings of Charles Ives, Emmanuel Feuermann, Manuel DeFalla, Igor & Soulima Stravinsky, Schubert Quartets, a whole lot of different things.

Enjoyed your Bartok podcast.
C

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