The New York Times has published a nice essay urging people to get over their fear of classical music and just enjoy the genre. The piece does not say anything that doesn’t get said once every five years or so in some prominent venue. But it does say it well. Miles Hoffman notes the existence of […]
The Death of Stalin begins with a terrifying radio story. Did it actually happen?
Good grief is there ever a lot of crossover classical stuff going on, much of it in the United Kingdom. Let’s see . . . The Classic FM online service is teaming up with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and PlayStation to present a show titled PlayStation in Concert, billboarding “the very best in video game music.” […]
“We gonna be dealing with aliens. You think black and white gonna be a problem? Wait till you start running into motherfuckers with three or four dicks!” – George Clinton
I am listening to South Dakota Public Broadcasting interview Joseph Horowitz, author of Classical Music in America: A History of its Rise and Fall. Judging from the author’s tone, the book decidedly focuses on the decline aspect of the story. “What we take for granted today,” Horowitz tells his radio interviewer David Gier, “that the market […]
Julius Eastman was a brilliant black/gay composer whose lamentably short life is explored on WBUR’s Here and Now. His music was beautiful, but its presentation was not for the faint of heart. I hear Bach’s C-minor Passacaglia in Eastman’s controversially titled work, “Evil Nigger.” You listen and decide for yourself. According to interviewed historian Tiona […]
I have started something called the “Hybrid Highbrow Network.” It is at this point mostly only a figment of my imagination, a matrix of people who don’t know they’re in the matrix but who mix classical, jazz, showtunes, world music and whatever into whatever comes out the other end, radio-wise. Undaunted by the fictional nature […]
My favorite college radio station, KZSC-FM in Santa Cruz, published a zine last year with many wonderful essays and photographs. Among my favorite graphics is a flow chart titled “How College Radio Are You?” full of questions that guide you along, depending on your level of college radio wisdom. So, if you know Prince’s favorite […]
We received the following package from an admirer last week, accompanied by this missive: “Howdy! Read in Monday’s New York Times about your low power FM radio efforts (I thought smartphones put an end to low power FM. Glad it did not). Back in the 1990’s I was interested enough to get a kit from […]
The fourth installment of my Hybrid Highbrow podcast gets at a musical phenomenon that I have wanted to explore for a while: the affinity that the jazz world has for the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. In pursuit of this nexus, I’m serving up some wonderful tracks by Richie Beirach, Tabula Rasa, Oliver Haynes, the Peter […]
