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Left of the Dial

2009-08-08T21:45:00.002-05:00

John Cage, one of the most celebrated, ridiculed, and altogether uncomprising composers of our lifetime, has been in the news a bit lately.

Two Sundays ago, we learned of the death at age 90 of Merce Cunningham. Cunningham garnered much more respect as a choreographer (even receiving the National Medal of Arts at the White House in 1990) than Cage ever did as a composer, but until Cage's 1992 death, the two were inseparable. Cunningham was a loyal accomplice to his own end: his last public appearance of note was a wheelchair-bound performance in 2007 of a "dance" he had conceived to accompany Cage's infamous 1952 work "4'33," in which the performers make no intentional sounds for four minutes, thirty-three seconds.

And this weekend saw a rare performance of a Cage work in England: 1951's Imaginary Landscape No. 4. (Read more about it in the Guardian, here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/aug/06/john-cage-symphony-for-radios.)
The score comprises no predetermined melody or harmony: it requires performers to be placed in front of 12 portable radios, moving among stations, adjusting volume.

Cage believed we should accept as a premise that the single most important thing in art was the frame -- the thing that formally separates an artistic expression from everyday life -- and that any subsequent judgments of value belonged solely to the individual. He was insistent upon removing all imposition from composition, upon erasing ego from the equation. Many times, beginning in the '40s, he made a buzz, and still occasionally does. But did he make important music? What do you think?

At-Work Listening

2009-07-22T11:53:00.002-05:00

MusicWorks recently surveyed 2,000 people in white- and blue-collar workplaces about how music affects their professional lives. Do people prefer music at work? 71 percent said yes. 77 percent said it makes them more productive. 84 percent said it improves morale.

You can see how people in various professional work environments responded here.

In KBIA's office, there's music on somewhere all the time. How about your office? Are you allowed to have music on? Does it vary from one workstation to another, or does each person choose? Is it in the foreground or background? And if it could be any kind of music, what would it be and why? We're curious ... let us know.

Live Classical Music: Bigger Than Life?

2009-07-10T10:48:00.002-05:00

The acclaimed Ravinia Festival in Chicago has taken a page from the amphitheatre- and arena-rock playbook: this summer's performances are now augmented by a pair of Jumbotrons mounted at the sides of the stage. Concertgoers now experience not just world-class performance, but also a 300-square-foot view of conductor James Conlon, say, or pianist Yefim Bronfman.

One Chicago columnist has expressed clear distaste for this development. You can read his views, and those of a few folks who vehemently disagree with him, here.

Is it nice to have Jumbotrons at a classical event of this size and caliber of prestige? Is it, in an era in which general appreciation of classical music is said to be waning, close to a necessity? Or is it neither? What do you think?

Word painting

2009-06-23T10:28:00.003-05:00

Every now and then you hear phrases that really help set a mental image or concept...as a former music teacher and lifelong music student I try to "collect" these phrases as they apply to music so that I might better explain a concept or image...this morning I added one to my mental collection.

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition...was a tribute to Indian Sarod player Ali Akbar Khan, wonderfully put together by Sandip Roy, editor with New America Media and host of New America Now on KALW in San Francisco.

Roy, included in his piece a quote from Ali Akbar Khan to students..."don't sing like a typewriter...sing like handwriting"...at that very moment I could picture the beautiful loops and turns of eastern handwriting as a contrast to the harsh tapping sounds of a typewriter.

I also thought that the phrase if used on younger students might need a little updating, I know my children have seen a typewriter but I don't think they've ever used one...my updated version might replace the typewriter with "noisy keyboard"...not quite the same ring but it might get the point across.

For the complete story on Ali Akbar Khan and his roll in bringing Indian Classical music to the US go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105798864

Do you have a phrase that helped you with a musical concept? Please share

Subscribing to the Music

2009-06-17T14:51:00.002-05:00

If you've been following trends in downloading music over the last decade, then you know that Napster -- once the haven for free peer-to-peer sharing -- now is a subsidiary of Best Buy, and has developed a business model initially dependent on users' paying 15 dollars a month to listen to as much music as they'd like (with a la carte mp3 purchases available as well). In the last month, Napster has slashed its price to five dollars per month, with five free mp3s thrown in the bargain ... another sign of trouble in the long-suffering world of online music-by-subscription.

Is anyone offering music via that method and doing well? Yes, says this article in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times: it's Naxos, the independent classical label. The Naxos Music Library, available at about $20 per month, is targeting America's colleges, universities, and public-school systems, and has been tapped by hundreds of thousands of music students, educators, and musicians.

It seems to be a glimmer of hope not just for the preservation of the online-music-subscription business model, but also for the longevity of classical music in the American consciousness. What do you think?

More on the Cliburn

2009-06-12T14:34:00.002-05:00

NPR Music has posted audio links to performances by the pianists who shared the gold-medal prize at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth: Haochen Zhang, 19, from China, and a young man from Japan, Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20, who was blind at birth.

To hear Zhang performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20, and Tsujii performing the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1, from the final round, with James Conlon and the Dallas Symphony -- and to hear 13 other semifinal- and final-round performances, click here.

And you can visit the Cliburn site for video of the performances.

Lost in America?

2009-06-03T13:13:00.003-05:00

Interesting story published this week in the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth, Texas, home turf of Van Cliburn and the annual Cliburn Piano Competition.

Only two Americans have won the Cliburn, possibly the most prestigious piano competition in the world, in the last 20 years. And for the third year running, no Americans have made the semifinals. Evidence of the decline of classical music in the American cultural and educational landscape? Some people think so.

Check out this article -- http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/1408170.html -- and let us know what you think.

Amazon's Top Ten

2009-05-06T14:51:00.003-05:00

A glance at Amazon.com's top ten classical cd's shows an interesting mix of what people are buying and the majority of what people are buying are singers or in the case of #10 a full choir (The Morman Tabernacle Choir's newest release)

2 cd's on the top ten are Britain's Got Talent's Paul Potts...I guess I haven't been paying attention because I hadn't even heard of him until the latest BGT sensation Susan Boyle was on every morning show, this time next year we'll probably see a couple of her releases on the top 10.

Also of note on the list is 3 Andrea Bocelli and 2 releases of trumpet soloist Chris Botti. You can see the entire list at http://tinyurl.com/cjkwxc

Make "My Performance Today" Yours!

2009-04-30T16:44:00.002-05:00

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?

2009-04-28T09:54:00.002-05:00

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

2009-04-17T14:16:00.005-05:00

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

2009-04-09T15:21:00.007-05:00

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!)

2009-04-01T13:37:00.002-05:00

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

Karen's Sweet 16 (updated)

2009-03-24T08:49:00.005-05:00

This year I have participated in March Madness...basketball isn't one of my favorite sports but I will have to say that College Basketball is more fun to watch than professional...and since Mizzou is doing better this year it's even more fun to watch...

Why am I participating in March Madness? Well first because one of my brackets is a fundraiser for my neice's softball team and the second one? All I have to say is that I got sucked in to the "madness"...at this point I'm not really doing very well...Wake Forest killed me...

Ok so what does this have to do with Classical music? Well I started thinking about which composers would I put in a "Sweet 16"? I don't have a complete list yet...it may just work out to an "Elite 8"...so here's the start of my list...these are composers whose body of work I enjoy...you'll note that most are from the Romantic period, there are a number of Composers that I haven't listed (yet) that I only enjoy maybe one or two of their works...but I may add them later.

Here's the list not in any particular order
Brahms
Beethoven
Dvorak
Mahler
Gould
Rachmaninoff
Verdi
Mozart
Percy Grainger
Schumann
Schubert

Who would you put in your "Sweet 16"?

-Karen Seeger

1st Post

2009-03-17T14:13:00.005-05:00

This is really just a practice post, being new to the blogging world...but I hope this is a place where you will come to share your musings about the music and other related topics.

I'll start off with a little musing about my background...I always knew I'd be in Band, I guess because of all the parades we went to growing up...not to mention the fact that my dad's favorite musical was The Music Man (my sister and I can recite it by heart). We lived in Texas when it was time for me to start band...I thought I wanted to play trumpet because Herb Alpert and Al Hirt were really big at the time. When it came time to try out the instruments I picked up a trumpet tried to blow through it and couldn't get a single note, I was devastated...I walk over to this really shiny big brass instrument picked it up and blew several notes...the instrument was a French Horn and it's been pretty much a part of my life to this day.

I have a Music Ed degree and taught for 3 years, I enjoyed teaching but I enjoy bringing the greatest music in the world to my Mid-Missouri audience every day.

Karen Seeger