posted by James Reel
Phil Rosenthal has a nice column in the Chicago Tribune about the success of National Public Radio in a difficult time for broadcast media. Rosenthal points out that NPR is bulking up its news divisions, and it has doubled its weekly audience, from 13 million to 26 million, in a little more than six years.
This is all well and good, but two things disturb me about today’s NPR.
First, the $15 million, three-year expansion of the news department (made possible more by inheriting a huge chunk of the Ray Kroc fortune than by garnering listener support or government funding) comes at the expense of NPR’s cultural programming. Music shows have been withering away over the past few years, ever since NPR execs put their trust in an evil Rasputin audience-research expert who, admitting that he dislikes music, phrases his findings in a way that belittles music lovers and portrays them as the death of public radio. Well, who needs cultural programming from NPR anyway? KUAT-FM has gotten along just fine without it for a good 20 years, drawing on other sources like Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media and Chicago commercial station WFMT.
Second, Rosenthal and NPR are measuring success by body count. The assumption: The audience has doubled in six years, so NPR must be doing something right. Well, public broadcasting’s historic mission has not been to attract the largest possible audience; that’s what commercial broadcasters are for. NPR and PBS are here to serve unserved audiences with valuable information, entertainment and educational programming on which commercial broadcasters could not make a profit.
If NPR’s success is to be measured by audience size rather than quality of content, we might as well give up on it now and throw our allegiance to all those exciting new reality shows on TV.
radio-life,
September 20th 2005 at 9:09 —
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posted by James Reel
Burt Schneider, who used to announce from time to time on KUAT-FM but now serves as the local All Things Considered host on KUAZ, has pointed me toward an interesting reader’s list at Amazon.com. Someone has recommended 19 novels revolving around classical music. Most seem to be murder mysteries; my taste runs more to literary fiction, so I’ve read only two items on the list: John Hersey’s Antonietta and Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto; Patchett’s is by far the better novel of the two. Burt would add a 20th title: A Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers, a novelist I admire although I haven’t read this book, either.
I haven’t perused any music-related novels (other than Bel Canto) in several years, and I’ve come to avoid them because novelists apparently can’t avoid making some huge musical blunder that spoils it all for me. In Sándor Márai’s excellent Embers, for example, which is about the decline of the Austrian empire rather than music, characters play a Chopin two-piano piece that doesn’t exist. There was no reason for Márai to invent one. He just got sloppy.
On a more positive note, off the top of my head I would recommend (tepidly) Frank Conroy’s Body and Soul, following the development of a young pianist, and (far more strongly) Mark Salzman’s The Soloist. The latter, about a concert cellist facing performer’s block, jury duty and a young prodigy for a student, is that rare work of fiction that gets the music right. It probably helped that Mark himself plays the cello and is the son of the late Martha Salzman, who was an excellent harpsichordist you may remember from her performances around Tucson.
quodlibet,
September 20th 2005 at 9:06 —
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posted by James Reel
I may not feel up to coming in for my air shift today, but at least I can sit here in the comfort of my home office, a dog literally at my feet, with an advance copy of Hilary Hahn's Mozart sonata CD playing on the computer, and pass along a bit of theater gossip.
Beowulf Alley, the promising newish theater company operating out of the former Johnny Gibson building downtown, will open Criminal Hearts on Sept. 23. This is one of several scripts credited to "Jane Martin," supposedly a Kentucky-based writer who never gives interviews and has never been seen in public. The Beowulf Alley people are repeating the rumor that Jane Martin is actually the pseudonym of writer-director Jon Jory, the man who adapted and directed Pride and Prejudice, now on the boards at Arizona Theatre Company. You can find a summary of the identity issue here.
Here's what I find annoying amid all the speculation about Jory: People on the one hand posit that Jory uses the Jane Martin pseudonym to give himself credibility when writing about women and women's issues, yet on the other hand they suggest that Jory writes these plays in collaboration with some woman, perhaps his wife, who is a costume designer rather than a playwright.
It's ridiculous to think that a man can't write with intelligence and sensitivity about women. But there are people who maintain, stridently, that only women can write about women, African Americans about African Americans, and so forth. All I can say is that someone who lacks the imagination and empathy to write about someone other than himself or herself has no business being a playwright. And someone lacking the imagination and empathy to believe that playwrights can write about "the other" has no business criticizing those who can.
tucson-arts,
September 19th 2005 at 9:32 —
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posted by James Reel
During the past couple of days, two bloggers have kindly linked to Cue Sheet: Rich Russell, who blogs mainly but not exclusively about the world of opera and choral music, and Greg Sandow, who (among many other activites) covers classical music for the Wall Street Journal and has a lot of great ideas about how to keep music connected to the audience. So if you’re new around here, welcome!
You can find an introduction to the blog here. Perhaps, now that I’ve been doing this a full month, it’s time to elaborate on a few points. First, I’ve noticed that nothing in the design of this site tells you who I am, and something needs to be done about that because I believe people should put their names behind their opinions. So … Name: James Reel. Occupations: morning announcer for KUAT-FM (weekdays between 5 and 11 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, you can hear me by going here), and freelance arts journalist. This site is hosted by KUAT, but needless to say the opinons expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of KUAT staff or management, the University of Arizona, the Arizona Board of Regents, my various other employers, the political party I vote against, the people I give positive or negative reviews, my two dogs, or any of my friends or detractors.
You can read the blog entries from a particular day by clicking on a calendar date at the right. Or you can browse entries in reverse chronological order, or by category:
Classical Music is self-explanatory, and is in part the holding tank for concert reviews I’ll post from time to time once the season gets underway.
Radio Life consists of revelations about goings-on at KUAT, and ruminations about the broadcasting biz.
Tucson Arts is commentary about non-music arts action around here, including links to my theater reviews in the Tucson Weekly.
Seven o’clock Cellist is where I post the occasional remark about being an over-age beginning cello student (I started lessons in May, just after I turned 47). The title comes from a story my teacher, Harry Clark, told me about the prominent cellist Janos Starker, although I haven’t yet confirmed this anecdote. It seems that Starker was getting tired of hearing his fellow musicians moan about how their concerts didn’t go as well as they’d thought, since they’d played everything perfectly while practicing just before the eight o’clock recital. Sneered Starker, “The world is full of seven o’clock cellists.” Since I generally sound better alone than when I play for Harry, I count myself among that sorry lot.
Quodlibet is where I dump material that doesn’t fit into any other category. The word was used mainly in the 18th century to denote a musical hodge-podge of short, unrelated, often humorous pieces. I could have called it something French, like “Mélange” or “Potpourri,” but I enjoy pretending to know something about Latin.
Have fun, and feel free to contact me by clicking on the e-mail link in the right-hand panel. I don’t allow the blog software to post unfiltered comments, because I’ve seen too many sites hijacked by spammers and monomaniacal wackos. So send me e-mail, and unless you tell me otherwise, I’ll consider your comments (positive and otherwise) for later posting.
quodlibet,
September 16th 2005 at 8:53 —
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posted by James Reel
Good lord—tragically hip UA assitant prof Charlie Bertsch and my old-school-feminist wife are both cited as experts on How to Read a Book in the same Arizona Daily Star article. Can you guess which one is the goth and which has the tattoos?
quodlibet,
September 16th 2005 at 8:44 —
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posted by James Reel
In the latest Tucson Weekly, I interview Kate Fisher in anticipation of her performance here in the touring production of Little Women. I thought she was absolutely perfect when she starred in Arizona Theatre Company’s version of My Fair Lady a few years ago, and she’ll no doubt make a fine impression in her current gig, if she can avoid being upstaged by Maureen McGovern (who has never struck me as a spotlight hog, anyway).
It’s de rigeur for these touring performers to say “I’m really looking forward to coming/returning to Tucson,” but in Kate Fisher’s case I’m certain she meant it. She spoke with pleasure about the various places she visited during her ATC stint, and grilled me on what she should do during her short stay here next week.
She also urged me, as they all do, to come see her show. I think I’ll pass on this one; Invisible Theatre is opening the same night, and I’ll have to review that for the Weekly, whereas Little Women would be long gone by the time I got a review of it into the paper. Besides, from the snippets I’ve heard online and the reviews I’ve read, the score would surely annoy me. It seems to be just one more of those anonymous pop-hack jobs rampant on Broadway these days … melodies without distinctive contours, music without personality.
Critics don’t much care for this show, but audiences seem to respond to it. I wish Kate Fisher well in Little Women; here’s hoping the tour will give her the national exposure she so deserves.
tucson-arts,
September 15th 2005 at 8:49 —
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