DRESS

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

One of the winners of this week's ballet ticket give-aways asked me something I haven't thought about for a long time: How do people dress to go to the ballet?

I told her: However they want, and however they feel comfortable. It's been so long since there was any sort of dress code for arts events--if there ever was one in Tucson--that I never give any thought to the diversity of dress in the typical audience at the TCC Music Hall or Leo Rich Theater or Centennial Hall. Occasionally you'll see a guy in a tux, but that's usually some board members on his way to or from the organization's fancy private event. Fewer and fewer men dress as I do, in jacket and tie for most things at the bigger venues (but not at the little come-as-you-are theaters); most of them show up in what they wear to work, and Tucson is not a necktie town. Women tend to take greater advantage of opportunities to dress up, and my wife, for one, will happily overdress for anything. But there's no real standard.

Interestingly, I've never seen young people (basically, college-age) dressed at all inappropriately for a performance. It's only a few middle-aged and older guys who on occasion dare to go to the ballet in outfits more appropriate for the homeless shelter or the "before" photos for a weight-loss program. That's a problem either with too little self-esteem, or so much self-esteem that they feel free to gross out everyone around them.

So, whether it's The Nutcracker (where the little girls tend to wear much fancier dresses than their moms or grandmothers) or the opera or symphony or Arizona Theatre Company, you can wear whatever makes you feel comfortable in public. There's no such thing as not having the right clothes for these events. The important thing is that you just go out and get cultured.

APPROACHING THE END OF THE YEAR

posted to Rappaport's Notebook by Robert Rappaport

As the year winds down, it's time to reflect on months gone by.

Political divisiveness grew to monumental proportions at both the federal and state levels, with issues such as health care, deficits and an overall horrible economy grabbing the headlines and causing drastic political dissent among the populace and an eventual voter revolt.

The elections swept some incumbents from power and changed the balance of power in the U.S. House, taking away the one-party rule of Democrats. Where it goes from here, we'll just have to wait and see.

On the state level, voters chose to raise the sales tax by a penny to help government emerge from its huge staggering deficit. No word yet on if it's working, but voters will have to reauthorize the tax in three years, or it goes away.

Immigration also stirred intense debate on both sides, with Arizona eventually passing a comprehensive law, referred to as SB 1070, which is pretty much tied up in the courts right now.

Here at AZPM, we lost our main TV anchor Bill Buckmaster to local AM radio, although he remains with us on Fridays for now. Kimberly Craft has taken over the reins at Arizona Illustrated until a replacement is hired. That could take awhile. This year also saw the creation of In-Depth Arizona on KUAZ, bringing back local features to the airwaves. They disappeared years ago, as staffing dwindled, but have been resurrected due to staff realignments and such. Good luck finding them on our website a day or two after the fact. You'll have to resort to search (and I recommend Google, instead of our own site). I understand changes are on the way to find the stuff easier.

We've also increased our Web presence, now posting most of our longer-form stuff online for radio and TV. No, it's not ALL there, but you still need a reason to listen to the radio and watch TV, right? The world is changing fast and who knows what will happen to the mediums, as streaming online gains an even bigger share of the market. Personally, I rarely watch TV or listen to the radio anymore the "old way." I get most everything online now and I'm not alone.

Lastly, I haven't been as up-to-date on maintaining the blog, as I use Twitter more often. It's quick and I don't need to worry about things like paragraphs, photos, etc. I promise to be more active in 2011.

What did I miss? It's been a long year. Please feel free to elaborate in the comments section.

CLASSICAL LISTINGS, AGAIN

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

A lot of people recently have been unable to find the classical listings online, and in truth the system put in place during the site redesign several months ago doesn't take into account what people ask about most. Until a few days ago, you had to scroll down the KUAT-FM home page to find the listings info at the bottom. Clicking that would take you to a page that displayed only the syndicated programs--for the most part, the concert shows we air at night, when we have the fewest listeners. The listings for the rest of the day, when we have the most listeners, are available only when you take an extra step: clicking on the individual date line. Now, it says right at the top, "click a date to see full listings," but a lot of people just don't see that.

So, for instance, you'll find the rundown of the month's syndicated shows here, but you have to click on a date to get a full listing of what we're playing the rest of the day. Drilling down through the site will take you to a page like this, which will give you most of the detail you need.

Obviously, that's not user-friendly for a lot of our friendly users, so some changes are in the works. Already, the Web guys have moved the basic listing info up to the top of the page. Re-doing the deeper listings displays will take more work, though, so don't expect that to change very soon. In the meantime, keep digging away--or feel free to call me while I'm on the air, and I can look something up for you.

GIVE THANKS AND CHA, CHA, CHA!

posted to Inside TV by Susie Hernandez

I know, this isn't the Cha Cha or the Rumba, but it's cool!

Why do we do it? Why do we put special programming on during the holidays and where is Charlie Rose? Why can’t this special schedule be around more often? I’ve been told folks want to show off our programming to their visiting relatives, “Oh? Your PBS station doesn’t air Ballykissangel every afternoon? Charlie Rose airs at WHAT time in your city?” TV is important, whether we like it or not. In fact, TV viewing can make or break a family weekend.

My strategy for the holidays has been passed down to me from generations of programmers. I'm guilty of starting it early too! We like to give people a PBS alternative to other network holiday programming. You know you won’t catch a football game on PBS. Shrek the Halls will unfortunately have a lot of commercials (but cute just the same!). The kick-off for holiday programming began with the premiere of the long awaited documentary Secrets of the Divine: The Altarpiece of Ciudad Rodrigo on November 18th. BritComs provided us with many holiday specials and we started airing those specials on the 20th! Tune in on Saturdays for some hilarious Christmas specials from the BBC throughout December!

Thanksgiving Day we launch into a marathon of America’s Ballroom Challenge starting off at noon with the grand finale ending at 5 PM.

T-day is also the beginning of holiday music. No groans please! Clay Aiken will by on at 5 PM, Faith Hill’s Joy to the World broadcasts at 8 PM, followed by Michael McDonald at 9, and Sting’s Songs from the Labyrinth at 10 PM.

Surprise! A one-hour Christmas special from Vicar of Dibley will air at 11 PM!

Black Friday we will continue with the holiday programming starting at noon,with an encore of Faith Hill and Michael McDonald. We sprinkled in BBC comedy with one of the Keeping Up Appearances Christmas Special at 2 PM and the Vicar at 2:30 PM!

Missed the special John Lennon programming earlier in the week? We are encoring Masterpiece and American Experience from 3:30 to 7 PM.

Exhausted from Thanksgiving? Relax on Friday night with Andrea Bocelli and David Foster at 8 PM. There’s so much more happening all weekend. Be on the lookout for the Rockettes and other great performances.

What's to come in the new year? We've got some programming shifts ahead and I'll keep you in the loop!

Stay Tuned,

Susie the TV Programmer

LARGE AUDIENCE, NOT MASS AUDIENCE

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

Here's the most sensible thing I've read in a long time about the classical audience:

So much effort goes into trying to find a mass market for classical music, all with remarkably little success. Could it be that there is a large market for classical music, but not a mass one? Could it be that classical music is granular and is made up of lots of connected but different niche markets? Could it be that there is no such thing as 'one size fits all' classical music? Could it be that when classical music is homogenised for the elusive mass market it loses its essential appeal? Could the mass market fallacy explain why so much classical music today is bland and unappealing? Could it also explain why creativity continues to flourish in genres such as world music and jazz which have shed their mass market pretensions?

That's courtesy of the blogger known as Pliable. He offers some fodder for argument from a British perspective here.

MUSIC IN THE MAIL

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

The Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival won’t arrive until March, but this is the time of year when we start distributing music to the participating musicians. They usually already own all the standard-rep scores, except for some of the solo string players who have been recruited to participate in a quartet or quintet especially for the festival. Still, there’s a fair amount of unusual material that these people have never played before, but have been persuaded to try through the sweet-talking of the festival’s artistic director, Peter Rejto.

It used to be Peter’sjob to make sure the scores got into the right hands, but since he moved to Australia a few years ago, antipodal mailing rates have proved exorbitant, so for the past few years Peter has had me send the material to our musicians scattered across North America. Usually, I make a photocopy of each part before I put it in the mail, because inevitably some musician will claim not to have received a score and will need a backup. (Said score usually turns up behind her couch a few months later.) This year, Peter has directed me to send the copies and keep the originals, because some of the scores can be rather expensive ($53.95 for the Henle urtext edition of three Mozart quintets) or difficult to track down (Harry Freedman’s Trois Poèmes de Jacques Prévert, which is available only from the Canadian Music Centre, not the usual music shops). Peter just doesn’t want to run the risk of losing any of this material—or, rather, letting the musicians lose it.

Now, you can say what you want about irresponsible, immature musicians not being able to keep track of some of the basic tools of their trade, but I’m inclined to be more forgiving. These people have a lot more on their schedules than the Tucson festival. Many of them teach and/or tour, which means their juggling a lot of other scores and responsibilities. Some have even more to deal with. Cellist Antonio Lysy, besides teaching, also runs a summer music festival in Italy; violinist Joseph Lin, who has spent the past few months on sabbatical in China and Japan, exploring and composing, will soon have to return to the U.S. to put in the last few months of his professorial gig at Cornell before becoming the new first violinist of the Juilliard Quartet. They have a few things on their minds.

So I’m packing up the photocopies and sending them off to Bardonia, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Ithaca. Next question: How many of the musicians will actually practice the music before March?