Response from Bill Lueth, Program Director of KDFC

I was honored to hear from Bill Lueth, Program Director of KDFC, one of the radio stations I highlighted in my last post. Thank you, Bill, for taking the time to write to me and enrich this blog's discussion of the classical radio industry.

"I found your blog today interesting. Like other formats, all classical stations 'market' to specific audiences, WQXR included, as they are the marketing voice of the NY times. By design, they appeal to an older and more musically sophisticated audience to match their readership I suppose. KDFC is geared as the gateway to this great music to include a younger audience that is not necessarily trained. We have a large audience of musical moms, albeit not Juliard trained, (although we have musically-trained folks listening too.)
I heart NY, but WQXR attracts half again as many listeners as KDFC with almost 3 times the potential audience in a market of 15 million + vs. SF at under 6 million population (market #4).
That means KDFC in the Spring ratings was the #2 music station in the Bay Area. WQXR was 20th in greater NY.
Now, we know that doesn't mean either stations can appeal to all classical fans. it doesn't mean one is better than the other. Each chose a target. KDFC believes those who like this music, but don't know it, should be invited to listen too like this gentleman who emailed be today.
"I love listening to KDFC on my way to work and driving back home. Really eases the mind after a long day of work." He asked about a composer named "Gambrial Foray."
Since not all kids get to have a musically-trained mom to make them musically wiser, we are trying to do our part to grow a new audience for this great music. So far we're held up as an example of success in the arts world of how to gain traction in a format many considered was dying.
We know that we can't appeal to all nor can WQXR, but these are two great stations with the same overall mission in 2 great cultural cities: keep classical music on the radio!"

Bill Lueth
Program Director KDFC

A Tale of Two Cities' Radio Stations

I've recently been spending quite a bit of time in San Francisco, where I lived from 1999 to 2006. While returning to a car culture, I've had the opportunity to listen to that city's classical radio station, 102.1 KDFC. Now that I live in New York and don't spend time in the car anymore, I listen to 96.3 WQXR at home while cooking dinner or hanging out with my kids. The difference between the two stations epitomizes the cultural differences I observe between the two cities.

WQXR, the New York Times' sponsored station, is the gold standard of classical radio. Because it is sponsored, it has fewer commercial breaks and it has the luxury of being able to play longer, more challenging works. Its audience includes some of the most well- trained classical enthusists in the world, and it has a thrilling local scene to draw upon as well. It's not uncommon to hear an entire symphony in the middle of the day, or to hear a new work recently premiered by the New York Philharmonic. The station plays recordings by first-rate performers -- I recently heard Horowitz playing a Chopin nocturne and Pollini playing a Beethoven sonata in the same afternoon -- and rarely sits back to rest on gimmicky favorites.

In contrast, KDFC caters to a much smaller city that doesn't have nearly the classical cultural focus of New York. To its credit, KDFC survives in a brutal industry in a city that has many other interests. Cities larger than San Francisco don't have their own classical radio station. But it unfortunately has to resort to a heavily contrived experience to hold on to its listeners. Instead of offering listeners a selective "shuffle" of great, timeless music performed by great, relevant performers, KDFC has created entirely risk-free programming within a manufactured marketing context. There is no shortage of pithy segments at KDFC: "The Island of Sanity: Weekdays at 2pm and 7pm"; "Mozart in the Morning: The Mozart Block at 9 O'Clock," etc. Its personalities, like more popular radio stations, are part of the show: Hoyt Smith takes you through the morning, followed by Diane Nicolini, Rik Malone. But rather than wake me up in the morning as other DJs do, the melifluous, faux-elegance of these guys makes me quickly lose interest.

This manufactured environment only plays music that is "Casual. Comfortable. Classical" resulting in more flute concertos and Telemann than anyone should have to hear. This spiritless tag line dooms the station to forever playing Baroque when it should be introducing San Francisco to Schostakovich, endless Mozart when Mutter waits in the wings. Since when is classical music "casual" and "comfortable"? I believe it should be marketed entirely the opposite way if it is to remain interesting and alluring to contemporary audiences. It should have us on the edge of our seats - even in our cars - with its contrasting volumes, earth shattering beauty, and natural rawness. How about a little "Raw. Riveting. Real." to shake up the day?

The Olympian

Although it's not available online, check out the lengthy article by The New Yorker's own editor, David Remnick, in the August 4th issue of the magazine. After spending nine days with the pianist Lang Lang in Beijing, Remnick presents an enlightening portrait of the pianist's rock star reputation and the state of classical music in China.

Sounds of the City

Since my last post, we have moved from Boston to Brooklyn where we have gone back to being an urban/subway riding/tote your own groceries sort of family. Coming back to New York City has been exciting for me (since I was raised here), but there are some realities of raising children in the city that I was either not aware of growing up here or else had forgotten. The constant sound on the streets has been particularly startling to me in our few weeks here. Perhaps it's because we live in a first floor apartment, and I can literally hear the conversations of people passing my windows, the chatter of my doorman on his cellphone, and the forlorn sound of the banjo player who camps out underneath my bedroom window one or two evenings a week. At this moment, I can hear some teenager belting out "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" from an arts day camp nearby. My daughters' favorite sound is that of the Mister Softee truck coming down our street to the school at the end of the block. I can't believe those trucks still play those tinkling bells!

But the street sounds that stand out to me most as a mother are those coming from cars trolling down the avenues or open air restaurant sound systems spilling onto sidewalks. Overwhelmingly, these sounds are dance music: hip hop, rap, techno. Always fast, always upbeat. I've been startled a few times as my girls have spontaneously started wiggling when we've passed a car or store blaring some music with a beat. They dance in line at the frozen yogurt store. They dance to the rap at the dry cleaners. They even started dancing at the elegant Italian trattoria where we ate dinner next to two European-styled older women -- while hip hop played in the background. Last night at dinner, my older daughter started singing "I like to move it move it... I like to move it move it..." Where did she get that??

Apart from the observation that my children -- who never hear or dance to any of these genres at home -- seem to innately understand and enjoy these sounds, I am fascinated by the ubiquity of these genres in our public spaces. Fast, electronic music is clearly the background sound of our everyday lives, and as one who notices which establishments choose which kinds of music, I'm usually amazed by how little thought goes into making the selected music congruous with the desired experience. The Italian trattoria, for instance, was decorated in earthy Tuscan tones with Italian posters lining the walls. Wooden beams were exposed to create a wine cellar feeling and even the plates had an authentically Italian terra cotta look. Clearly much thought had been put into the overall atmosphere and design... except when it came to the music. The default to standard hip hop showed a strange lack of understanding that aural experiences contribute to the impact of design, food, and atmosphere.

The only store I've been in recently that has demonstrated an understanding of this principle is a high-end children's boutique in TriBeCa that specializes in 1930s and 40s designs. The store is decorated to transport the shopper back to this time period: vintage toys, even a vintage front door invite the shopper to be totally immersed in the brand attributes. Thank heavens the sound system was playing standards from the Great American Songbook!

But experiences like this make me wonder what it would be like if the standard electronic background music of our everyday lives were replaced with more "authentic" (that loaded word) sounds? Would my own daughters, exposed to and trained in the acoustic tradition, still start dancing outside of a store if it were playing Rigoletto instead of Rihanna?

I recently had two experiences in which the standard public soundtrack was replaced with music that resonates more with me. On the evening of the Fourth of July, my family was in our car driving home from Connecticut where we had spent the holiday with some friends. As we neared our exit on the Brooklyn/Queens Expressway, the traffic completely stopped. We had hoped to avoid all the traffic from the local fireworks shows, but soon after we stopped the mother of all fireworks shows began: the Macy's show in Lower Manhattan. I suspect our traffic was generated at least in part by people in other cars stopping to watch the show, because from the Brooklyn side of the East River we were perfectly positioned to see the whole thing. As the fireworks started outside our front window, Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto started simultaneously on the radio station we were listening to in our car. So our soundtrack to the biggest fireworks show in the nation was none other than Beethoven and a glorious performance by Maurizio Pollini.

As we flipped radio stations after the concerto was over, I realized that several other popular radio stations had provide their own official soundtracks during the show: a little Billy Joel, Springsteen, and several other good ol' American bands. I thought about what a different experience we had had watching the show to our own soundtrack-- a soundtrack that, for me, truly emphasized the majesty not only of what we were seeing but of what we were celebrating that day. My response to the moment was so much greater because it was accompanied by music that matched the hugeness and glory of what was going on outside.

More recently, I took the girls to a children's opera in a nearby playground -- a 30 minute version of Carmen in which my daughter was very disappointed that they had edited out Carmen's death at the end -- that was amplified to accommodate the outdoor setting. After the performance was over, the sound engineers turned on a soprano aria that I was not familiar with but which blared over the entire playground. As I pushed my daughters on the swings, I looked around at the scores of other children and parents/nannies milling around that park and wondered if they even noticed what was playing. To me, it was exquisite to have a simple act like swinging my kids on a crowded playground accompanied by the heavenly tones of this mellow-tempoed solo aria. The moment was made even more poignant since the middle school kids with us at the swings were laughing about which of them were "fags" and "whores". It reminded me of that moment in The Shawshank Redemption when the duet from Marriage of Figaro gives the prisoners a moment of emotional freedom. I teared up as we started walking home, devastated to leave this playground soundtrack behind and a little shocked that every single person at that park had not completely stopped what they were doing to marvel at the gorgeous music around us.

I'd love to hear more opinions on this topic. What are your responses to music in public spaces? Do you even notice it? Does it ever bother you, disrupt your dinner, drive you out of a store? What do you think would be the general response if public spaces featured a variety of genres? Would there be any response or are we too inured to the whole subject?

Beethoven's Ode to What?

In the hubbub of graduating and moving, I haven't been posting a lot the last several weeks, but a recent conversation with my dad prompted me to formulate some thoughts about larger philosophical issues in music. The cover of this month's Gramophone magazine features six of "Today's Great Composers", including Reich, Golijov and Adams. I'm familiar with music from all of these composers and I understand -- on the surface at least -- where they are coming from in terms of answering the musical traditions of the past. My dad, an admitted musical reactionary of extreme proportions, has trouble with all of their music, claiming that it lacks "melody", his defining factor for greatness (think Verdi). He also noticed with distain that all of the photographed composers are dressed in jeans or black khakis. Our opposing reactions to Gramophone's cover spurred an interesting conversation.

While some of these current composers are turning away from the esoteric philosophy-composition that has dominated so much art music of the last 50 years, there is no doubt that composition -- even with melody and with audience appeal in mind -- has been permanently transformed since the last of the canonical traditionalists in the 1940s or 50s. I argue that this is an inevitable evolution responding to the fragmentation of genres and the domination of commercialized music, and that members of the "Shuffle generation" like me -- younger people who routinely listen to music of a swath of genres -- understand the influences and the relevance of the music of Adams, Ades, Glass, et al. The best of their music is complex, thoughtful, beautifully structured and contains compelling lines, even if you might not get a "Di Quella Pira"- type melody with every aria. My dad sees this transformation as an inability to hear or understand real beauty, and therefore an irredeemable fault. In our conversation, he argued that the music of "today's great composers" simply isn't beautiful.

He's right in that the main purpose of most music today is not simply to represent beauty, as it has been in ages past. Often the purpose of today's art music is to represent more negative feelings, or at least a realistic sense of the world we live in. But this rejection of romantic ideals isn't just happening in art music. It's been in progress for decades in all art forms. Music may be where disillusionment, frustration, and anger are most commercialized -- those are, after all, the primary sentiments of much rap and hip hop -- but it's not an evolution confined to Western art music. In that vein, I suggested to my dad that the next generations might not even hear beauty the way he does; that, in fact, Beethoven's Ode to Joy might not even mean triumph, joy, and beauty to listeners in 50 years, the way it does to him. This idea absolutely floored him. There has always been to him, and to many of his generation, one absolute aesthetic. But if a child of today grows up hearing only commercial music, what guarantee is there that that child will think "Oh! Joy, brotherly love, beauty!" if suddenly confronted with the Ode to Joy?

I realized during my class this past semester how much our aesthetic sense has changed as humans over the course of the past few hundred years as we discussed modes and liturgical music. In early church music, modes were beautiful, although they mostly sound a little strange to us today. Similarly, as we studied Islamic music, I was made aware of the maliable construct of our 12-tone scale. In Islamic music, their scale has 47 tones! There apparently is no absolute even in those elements of music that are mathematically constructed.

These aesthetics change over much longer periods than just one person's lifetime, which is why my dad has such a hard time imagining a world without the Ode to Joy. After all, Western art music of the past three hundred years is, essentially, all he's ever known. As a reactionary myself -- although not to the degree of my father -- I want to work to make sure the Ode to Joy always means joy, brotherly love, and beauty to those who hear it. But I also understand that there is no absolute aesthetic, that Western art music must work to find its place among the myriad of contemporary genres, and that those other genres are speaking to people with as much force as the Ode to Joy speaks to my dad.

This Is Why I Love Opera

How many people can do this live without a serious sound engineer working overtime?

Karajan Reviled

I came across a rather startling article in the British publication The Independent. This weekend marks the centenary of Herbert von Karajan's birth, the Austrian conductor who dominated the symphonic and operatic scene in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. In my home growing up, Karajan was the standard of excellence that every performance was measured against. He was considered the great modernizer, the passionate madman who brought true fire to every work he tackled. His tempos were faster or slower than others', his dynamics louder or softer. I've never read a true rebuke of his work such as this one. Norman Lebrecht, a prominent British cultural commentator, spares no words for the man he feels destroyed the classical music industry in the twentieth century:

"Whether Herbert von Karajan was a bad man or a good man is immaterial. He was a brilliant organiser with the gift of tuning an orchestra to his personal sound, an ability that he exploited to extreme ends. He inflicted his ego on the world of classical music in a way that crushed independence and creativity and damaged its image for future generations. It is not the bad man he was that we should deplore but the reactionary and exclusivist legacy which is being "celebrated". For music lovers, there is not much to celebrate. Once the centenary is over, we will drop the curtain once and for all on a discreditable life that yielded no fresh thought and upheld no worthwhile human value. Karajan is dead. Music is much better off without him."