THE TRUTH ABOUT RADIO FUNDRAISING

posted by James Reel

    As I write, we’re in the second day of our blessedly abbreviated autumn membership campaign. We’re supposed to sound happy and excited about it on the air, and we actually are … part of the time. But, in truth, our enthusiasm rises and falls through a predictable cycle.
    Describing only my own feelings, I admit that when management reminds us that a pledge drive is coming, my first response is dismay. The schedule gets a lot more hectic than usual, as we work the music around a set of strictly timed fundraising breaks. Besides expecting more hectic shifts, I also anticipate … boredom. These campaigns usually go on for several days (this one lasts only two); I’m sitting here for six hours a day, exposed to the same set of arguments and incentives over and over and over again.
    But then the campaign begins, and it’s actually fun. It’s a break from our usual routine, we get to speak to you in a more personal way, and we can interact with our colleagues and visitors (the radio business is usually quite solitary). It feels like we’re doing something that’s both special and necessary, and we really don’t spend that much time out of every year doing it.
    And then comes the next phase: fatigue. What is initially fun and fresh gets old within a few days, and we start wondering why each of you listeners can’t just stop what you’re doing, take 90 seconds to call in a pledge, even just a little pledge, and let us get back to the music schedule—now. The dead spots of the day (midmorning, midafternoon) become predictable, and depressing. Several years ago, Mike Serres pretended to sob in despair on air during a particularly dreary Saturday afternoon.
    Finally, it’s over. Jubilation! We’ve got some money in the bank, or at least on its way, and work gets back to normal. And, in retrospect, nobody suffered all that much during the campaign. In fact, the change of pace was rather enjoyable. In a bizarre twist of psychology, we anticipate the next drive, some months hence, with something resembling … pleasure. We are sick, sick people.

ROGUES AND SPIRITS

posted by James Reel

    Oops—almost forgot to post links to my theater reviews in the current Tucson Weekly. First, a new company deserves plaudits for its ambition, even if the final product leaves a bit to be desiered:

Rogue Theatre's ambitious first production, The Balcony, announces a company of serious purpose, high artistic aspirations, courage and refreshingly perverse intellectual tastes. If this production falls just short of the ideal, it's first because of playwright Jean Genet's own lack of artistic self-control, and second because the company hesitates to indulge Genet fully in his worst excesses.

When Arizona Theatre Company produced Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit in 1997, even a psychic would have sensed a vast emptiness on the stage. Coward's little farce evaporated and floated away, the actors dwarfed by the set, the script seeming to be annoyingly insubstantial. Blithe Spirit works far, far better in the tight confines of Live Theatre Workshop, where it opened last weekend and still proves to be insubstantial, but now amusingly so.

FAN MAIL

posted by James Reel

    Some time ago I found in my mailbox an envelope holding a letter I’d written to a listener in response to a question she’d posed about a piece of music; at the bottom of the letter, she’d jotted an appreciative little note. What’s striking about this letter—aside from the shameless and excessive way I misused “which” in restrictive clauses back then—is that I wrote it in 1984, and the listener still had it!
    She’d written to me (I was KUAT’s music director then) for information on obtaining a recording of something she’d recently heard us play, Auber’s hour-long ballet Marco Spada. I regretted to inform her that the disc we’d broadcast was out of print and no other recording was available, but I gave her some tips on where she might find used copies and cutouts. I also mentioned that I’d scheduled the ballet again for a particular afternoon two months later. Turns out she taped that broadcast, and folded up my letter and tucked it into the cassette case.
    The lesson here is that our listeners are inquisitive, tenacious, grateful, and have very, very long memories. It’s good to have friends like these … as long as we behave ourselves, because we could just as easily turn tenacious people with long memories into enemies for life.

BREVITY

posted by James Reel

    To see my advice on how to fake a classical concert review put to use in the real world, look at this coverage of last weekend’s Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra performance. In a 447-word review, only 132 words—two paragraphs near the end—discuss the musical aspects of the concert in a meaningful way. Might as well just run a photo with those 132 words as the caption.

MASS MARKETING

posted by James Reel

    KUAZ’s David Close and I were snickering this morning about the new underwriting announcement for Carondelet Health Network, which invites one and all to “a White Mass with the purpose of offering inspiration and guidance for those in the healthcare field.” Is a White Mass something that shows up on an MRI? Or, if we were closer to Halloween, would they be celebrating a Black Mass?
    It turns out that this White Mass is the latest trend among Catholic-sponsored health facilities. The Web site of a Tennessee health system informs ignorant little me that “The White Mass is traditionally celebrated close to the feast day of the patron saint of physicians and healthcare workers, St. Luke (October 18). St. Luke, thought to be one of the earliest converts, studied medicine in Antioch and Tarsus. It is speculated that he was traveling as a ship's doctor when he encountered Christianity.”
    Furthermore, “Though it is interesting that the term White Mass was selected for celebrating with healthcare workers who often wear white uniforms in their work, the term is actually taken from the color of vestments worn on the Feast of St. Luke.” Apparently there’s also a Red Mass for lawyers, and a Blue Mass for police. I doubt that broadcasters enlist priests as intermediaries to celebrate a Mass on our behalf; we’re in the business of erecting towers of Babel.

REVIEW: FRANÇOIS RABBATH/ARIZONA BASS PLAYERS FESTIVAL

posted by James Reel

    The American String Teachers Association urges its members to teach not only the usual classical approach, but also “alternative styles,” meaning everything that isn’t classical music. The word “alternative” suggests that classical music is still the foundation of everything (as well it should be, from the standpoint of technique), and that jazz and bluegrass and Latin and gypsy genres are extra options to be selected from an educational menu. Well, it’s difficult to think of any kinds of music being “alternative” or “optional” when they are all melded so expertly in the work of François Rabbath, a superb Lebanese-born French bassist and composer. Rabbath performed last night (Oct. 7) at the University of Arizona’s Crowder Hall as part of the Arizona Bass Players Festival.
    Rabbath played several of his own compact, evocative pieces, as well as items by Antonio Vivaldi, Frank Proto and George Gershwin. Even jet-lagged and 74 years old, Rabbath is a bassist to reckon with; he gives himself plenty of challenges of technique and expression, but makes them all look and sound like the easiest thing in the world. It appeared that he was caressing and tickling the fingerboard rather than working to get the notes.
    The self-taught Rabbath grew up playing jazz in a Beirut restaurant; in his 20s he moved to France, worked as a sideman for such singers as Charles Aznavour and Jacques Brel, eventually played in the Paris Opera Orchestra and recorded all sorts of music. His own compositions ignore musical frontiers; they often contain Middle Eastern melodic elements, a jazzy sense of rhythm, and methods of structure and expression that would meet with the approval of any classical partisan.
    Just consider his first piece, the item with which he usually opens recitals, Poucha-Dass. It’s a raga inspired by contact with the Indian musician Ravi Shankar, and Rabbath somehow drew from his bass the buzz of a sitar. The extraordinarily beautiful Reitba, inspired by a rose-colored lake near Dakar, began with a rocking rhythmic figure suggesting gentle waves; this was soon overlaid with a keening Middle Eastern melody, all rising to an ecstatic central climax. In a little piece called Chasse à Cours, Rabbath’s bass perfectly imitated the nasal vibrato of French hunting horns. And in a composition whose title Rabbath translated as The E in the Bull’s Eye, not just the low E but every note was right on target in a piece that seemed to blend the muezzin’s call from the minaret with the rumbling drone of a didgeridoo.
    Rabbath was equally adept with other people’s music. He showed off his superb intonation in a Vivaldi Adagio, finding passion within nobility, and similarly brought warmth and ardor to a movement from one of Bach’s cello suites. And he showed off all his skills in Frank Proto’s Nine Variants on Paganini, which began like a French cabaret song, turned to jazzier ruminations, and culminated in a cadenza that was essentially Paganini’s devilish 24th caprice for solo violin.
    Pianist June Chow-Tyne certainly held her own in the Proto work, but was not seriously challenged in any of the other pieces; she always gave Rabbath the sensitively balanced support he needed.
    Rabbath will pop up again in further performances involving John Clayton, Brian Bromberg and Kristin Korb as the Arizona Bass Players Festival continues through Oct. 9.