LESS PLATTER, MORE CHATTER

posted by James Reel

    An article in the Chicago Tribune describes outrage among Chicago’s jazz-establishment personalities over news that the city’s three bundled public radio stations will switch from music programming to talk in early 2007. People seem especially upset over the loss of the jazz and world music format of WBEZ-FM. Details so far are nonexistent, but the article has this from WBEZ/WBEW president and general manager Torey Malatia (who worked in Phoenix in the 1980s, when that city had a commercial classical station): “WBEW will be focused ‘heavily [on] culture and music and arts’ … while WBEZ will offer ‘mostly public affairs [with] arts and culture certainly mixed in as relief.’” All talk, but it won’t all be about the events of the day.
    So first, the good news is that the two stations won’t be duplicating the same network news/talk programming, as is happening in Washington, DC. There are legitimate questions about whether the stations can serve culture better by playing it less and talking about it more, but the more serious question is how will this serve Chicago listeners? According to the article, WBEZ “draws 600,000 listeners,” although it’s not clear exactly what that means in terms of individual sets of ears over a particular period. Still, the number sounds pretty impressive: Imagine everyone who lives within the Tucson city limits tuning to the same station. But it doesn’t seem like all that much for a city as big as Chicago, particularly with its long jazz heritage. Is jazz simply too much of a niche genre? Has the station been playing the wrong kind of jazz? Does the presence of world music turn off hard-core jazz fans, or attract more listeners who aren’t that committed to jazz?
    These are issues that Malatia has presumably been thinking hard about. Let’s just hope that whatever changes come to pass are being made to serve Chicago’s underserved listeners better, and not merely to trade the current audience for new listeners who will give more money during pledge drives.

AURAL SOMINEX?

posted by James Reel

    Rich Russell objects to radio announcers promoting classical music as “relaxing,” and so do I. What Rich probably doesn’t realize is that there’s a widespread, consultant-generated effort among radio stations to assure potential listeners that classical music is “relaxing”—hence, not threatening—because a survey taken a few years ago revealed that many people used that very word to describe the music. (Whether they came up with that term on their own or it was one of several loaded expressions offered by the canvassers is unclear to me.)
    Our music director, Steve Hahn, mentioned in a staff meeting a few weeks ago that more recent interpretation of that research indicates that people don’t really believe that classical music is relaxing, it’s just a convenient word they use to set the music apart from the high-decibel assault of even the most innocuous pop music today. So all they mean is that it’s “different,” perhaps less invasive, than certain other kinds of music. Well, maybe that’s a little closer to the truth, but Beethoven symphonies and Carmina Burana—some of the most popular classical works among people who don’t count themselves as hard-core classical fans—are in their way just as invasive as any stadium rock band. Sure, there’s plenty of aimless classical piffle out there (the Elgar Violin Concerto, anyone?), but anybody who thinks that classical music on the whole is “relaxing” just isn’t paying attention.
    But then, how many people really sit and pay attention to the radio anymore?

KEEPING AMERICA SAFE FROM VIOLISTS

posted by James Reel

    I keep forgetting to post this, even after having gotten permission from the author, Neil Hughes, a music librarian at the University of Georgia. The inspiration was the announcement in late March that England's Halle orchestra canceled its American tour when the cost of obtaining visas for their players and staff became prohibitively expensive, now that various arms of our government are doing everything they can to keep potential terrorists from entering the country. For the literal-minded among you, I should point out that this is humor:

    I can't believe this...you would actually allow, for example, a foreign viola section into our country without thoroughly vetting them first? Wake up, people! These radicals are known for such heinous acts as tuning to A415Hz while the rest of the orchestra tunes to A440, without posting warnings outside the hall and in the program notes. This can cause North American hearing aids to explode. (The bloody tactic is described in a recently-released CIA document entitled Weapons of Musical Destruction: The Limey Sleeper Cell Situation.)  Individuals from these cells have also been known to play Harold in Italy, and to laugh at their victims while so doing. The larger organizations of which they are a part have also been caught, red-handed, playing concerts comprising nothing but the music of Vaughan Williams (who, suspiciously enough, pronounces his first name as "Rafe," which sounds kinda Arabic to me). "My GOD, not another modal folksong quotation!" one of their recent hostages was heard to cry, just before he hurled himself from the parquet.
    Is this the kind of America you want to see? I say, charge 'em double for those visas, throw up fabricated obstacles at every step of their way, and make 'em stand in line in the back alleys of London until Manchester freezes over. We need to keep our concert halls safe from this sort of insidious blight.

SPROCKETS

posted by James Reel

    For a change, my contribution to the latest Tucson Weekly is about film instead of theater:

    To celebrate the 15th Arizona International Film Festival, held April 20-30, organizer Giulio Scalinger wanted to plan nonstop parties. Unexpectedly for a medium usually associated with fantasy, real life got in the way.
    An important component of every festival is Cine sin Fronteras, exploring the complex U.S.-Mexico border, with screenings and panel discussions revolving around international relations and immigration.
    Well, right now, we've got grizzled old Minutemen camped out in their RVs trying to turn in illegal border crossers, politicians in Phoenix and Washington issuing proposals and counter-proposals on immigration control with an eye toward re-election rather than social justice, and hundreds of thousands of adults and especially high school students demonstrating in support of the rights of undocumented workers and their families.
    All of a sudden, parties seemed beside the point when there were so many films available about current border events.

BLACK THOUGHTS

posted by James Reel

    One reason I haven’t posted in a few days is that I’m busy cataloguing KUAT’s next batch of new CDs, which will be scattered through the May schedule. I’m still working my way through them, but I’ll pause long enough to share with you the greatest frustration of the process: writing the catalog number on the disc booklet.
    A trivial task, right? Just take my government-issued Sharpie fine-point marker and jot four numerals onto the laminated paper, so we know where to find the disc on the shelf. (They’re numbered in order of acquisition; this group brings us up to CD number 4861.) Problem: Record companies have succumbed to a mania for black cover designs.
    And it seems that the higher the quality of the production and packaging, the more likely that the cover will be awash in black ink. Harmonia Mundi is the prime offender, but many other labels follow suit. Black suggests elegance and seriousness of purpose, I suppose, and it’s the one color that will come back from the printer pretty much the way it looks on the designer’s computer screen.
    This may have started back in the 1970s, with those ubiquitous Christian Steiner portraits of pianists in black pullovers, nestled up against their instruments; all you could see were their faces, hands, keyboards, and sometimes piano strings. The images were arresting, if predictable after a while.
    Black does often provide the basis of a striking cover design, but come on, guys, black is so ’90s. Help consumers out with something brighter and more consistently eye-catching, and help me out with colors that are easier to write on. (Yes, I know, I could use white ink, but we don’t have any white Sharpies in the supply room, and yellow or pink highlighters won’t do the job.)
    I never thought I’d say this, but I miss those Musical Heritage Society LP jackets from the 1960s and ’70s. They looked very much like the labels on the cans and boxes of “generic” food sold at bargain prices 30 years ago: simple black type on an all white background. MHS would position the type on the right, run a thick, vertical column rule a little off center, and on the left plop some icky public-domain line art. Cheap, but effective. After all, MHS was a mail-order company, and didn’t have to make fancy covers that would attract browsers at the retail bins.
    Best of all, they were easy to write on.

SUSAN SAYS

posted by James Reel

    This has turned up on the electronic staff bulletin board:

    April 5, 2006 · Enough about Katie Couric. A female news anchor may be a big deal for television, but here at NPR, we recognize a different trailblazer. In 1972, Susan Stamberg became the first woman to host a nightly network news program -- All Things Considered. After holding that job for 14 years, Stamberg has this advice for Couric:

    Here's how long ago it was: In those days, I had a steak-and-cheese sandwich with onions for lunch every day. My first anchor day, I couldn't eat my lunch.
    My advice:
    1. Eat your lunch every day. Veggies.
    2. For your half-hour nightly broadcast, have more than the five reporters we had, for ATC's then-90 minutes.
    3. No catchy graphics. We found we never needed them.
    4. Read and prepare as if your life depended on it.
    5. Combing one's hair was never a priority here, and I can't see why it should be for you.
    6. Read and prepare as if your life depended on it.
    7. Be careful not to repeat yourself.
    8. Don't let anyone tell you a woman won't be taken seriously doing anchor work. Over time, you'll be taken as seriously as you take yourself and your audience. And don't be afraid to laugh. But filter it a bit. It's better to be compassionate, humane, steady.
    9. Get off on time. [James Reel notes: Bob Edwards has said that he expects his tombstone to be inscribed, "He got off on time."]
    10. Don't believe people who promise TEN pieces of advice.

-- Susan Stamberg