Make "My Performance Today" Yours!

Performance Today has long been known for showcasing live performance by the best classical musicians, veteran and undiscovered alike. How would you like to be on the program? "My Performance Today" could make it happen!

The program is inviting listeners over the next couple of weeks to record themselves performing a copyright-free or public domain classical work, and to upload it via YouTube, MySpace, or Gather.com. The best performances will appear on the Performance Today site ... and perhaps your recording will find its way on air!

To get complete details and to hear the submissions published so far, click on the "My Performance Today" button at the top, or here. The deadline is May 15. Good luck!

WQXR Goes ESPN?

Those of us in the classical broadcasting world awakened this morning to an alarming rumor: that New York's WQXR might be switching formats, possibly to sports-talk.

Here is the item, published April 28 in the New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/seven/04282009/gossip/pagesix/music_could_die_at_times_co__166569.htm

Public radio presumably would pick up the majority of those listeners. Good for public radio, but, one is inclined to think, bad for radio overall.

'QXR has been a classical music station since 1944. Its demise would mean the disappearance of classical music from the commercial airwaves in the largest radio market in America. And it would mean one less commercial classical station in America, where fewer than 20 non-public, all-classical frequencies remain, not all of them on the FM dial.

It's easy to ascribe the primary reason for this development: the bottom line. Far more difficult to ascertain is what might be done. Is it a matter of making different programming choices? Coming up with innovative marketing strategies? Or somehow altering the expectations of media executives fixated on the youth market and the quick buck?

Your thoughts are welcome ...

YouTube Symphony Orchestra

No longer content to be the online hub of video sharing, YouTube has harnessed its unique power not just to propagate, but to generate, culture in a seemingly unprecedented way.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra made its debut at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night. At the outset, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas delivered a novel and appropriate response to the famous question of how one gets to that stage: "Upload! Upload! Upload!" Indeed, there were, alongside a number of professional musicians among the symphony of 96, a gaggle of performers with day jobs -- a surgeon, a physicist, a professional poker player -- all selected via an "American Idol"-type selection process conducted, of course, online.

And in the spirit of things, the center of the evening's program was a new work by Tan Dun, "Internet Symphony No. 1: Eroica." You can watch the whole thing in HD below.

Simple novelty? Cultural phenomenon? Harbinger of a day when musicians with symphonic aspirations convene via broadband from 96 locations around the world to collaborate in real time? What do you think?

Musical Remembering

I love the way music can remind me of a place, a time or a person.

This afternoon I played Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2, every time I hear that I remember exactly where I was...and the emotional response I had for this piece. Weber's Clarinet concerto will remind me of a college classmate...I think this was the one she stomped her foot while playing a portion for a student recital...the foot stomp was because she made a little flub that most of us hadn't detected until of course she removed all doubt by the little stomp.

From time to time I receive calls from listeners that describe some of the same sentiments regarding the music...I really enjoy these calls and its my hope for this blog to be a place where we can share moments like that...

As far as Hanson's Symphony...I was attending a Music conference at Tan-Tar-A as Music Education student, the Kansas City Symphony was performing...being a horn player I was overwhelmed with the soaring melodies...Mahler also does this to me, especially the 1st and 5th symphonies.

What are your "musical rememberings"?

Sweet 16 (plus 16!)

Tonight, one of the great pianists of his time, Andras Schiff, is wrapping up a truly remarkable project, one that he had been saving until after age 50. Over the past four years, he has dedicated himself to performing all 32 Beethoven sonatas. He played them all live over the course of eight concerts each in 2005-2006 at Verbier in Switzerland and at Tanglewood. And this evening, his two-season residency at Disney Hall in L.A. comes to a close.

The ECM record label will release the entire cycle as performed by Schiff on eight CDs later this year, but why wait for a taste of his greatness? You can hear him perform Beethoven's final three piano sonatas in a live Webcast tonight from Disney Hall. It's at 10 p.m. Central time, and is expected to last about two hours. As you listen, you can open up a special chat window that NPR has created for the occasion.

Find the links at the KBIA Classical section of our site ... and be sure to let us know what you think!

John Bailey