Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

WWFM From Remarkable to Canned Classical Music

I was wading through WWFM dross in my email account, and I came across a screenshot from 2012, distributed to the staff by one of our former general managers.

His comment: “This is a snapshot of just a few of the programming gems we offer in the next 48 hours… pretty remarkable! Add in all our STPs [locally-produced specialty programs, like “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord”], and I think it is safe to claim we offer classical programming superbly differentiated from any other classical station in the United States…”

Now, of course, WWFM fills its days largely with canned music, much of it sliced and diced, as opposed to note-complete, from a service in Minnesota.

IMAGES: A detail from that screenshot and a visual reminder that WWFM is badly in need of more cowbell

May 15, 2023
Radio Days My Mom & Me

Mom was so proud to have me on the radio. She didn’t live to hear “Picture Perfect” or my weekday afternoon shifts, or to follow my newspaper articles, but she used to listen on weekend mornings and never missed “The Lost Chord.” Until last year, I didn’t have any photos of the two of us. Then I found a few at the old house. This one is one my favorites, as clearly we are birds of a feather.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

May 14, 2023
Classical Radio: KWAX Beckons After WWFM

WWFM may have dropped my weekly shows. But by heading west to KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon, I am that much closer to Japan.

This week, “The Lost Chord” continues, as we sample selections from Naxos’ “Japanese Classics Series.” We’ll hear Kiyoshige Koyama’s variations on a woodcutter’s song, “Kobiki-Uta” (1957), Qunihico Hashimoto’s symphonic suite “Heavenly Maiden and Fisherman” (1933), and Komei Abe’s neoclassical Symphony No. 1 (1957). Armchair travelers, your passage is paid!

I’ve got my hands full here at the moment, as I am in the process of arranging to take over production and distribution of “The Lost Chord” and “Picture Perfect.” Ideally, this means the shows will be heard more widely, but what is more exciting from a listener standpoint is that I will again be able to create new material. Part-time staff has not been allowed back in to the WWFM studios for over three years. You can thank the pandemic, the budget, and good old-fashioned, poor human relations skills.

The continuing decline of WWFM, once one of the finest classical music stations in the country, has been depressing for anyone who cares about music, with most of its passionate, dedicated staff driven off and replaced by an average of 20 hours a day of evaporated milk pumped in from Minnesota. One local host pops in for maybe four hours twice a week. You know something’s askew when during those hours you long for more Minnesota. The team of knowledgeable and enthusiastic record collectors that made the station so quirky and compellingly listenable is no more.

The pill would be less bitter, perhaps, if the canned version at least allowed the music to breathe, as opposed to chopping it up into the greatest moments of the greatest hits, and if the hosts weren’t so in love with their own chatter.

That said, despair not, friends! Quality classical radio still exists, and thankfully, it’s a small world after all. KWAX presents the music complete, the way the composers intended, and in a manner that won’t frustrate or annoy those who care about it. The general manager is Peter Van De Graaff, who once also had a substantial presence on WWFM, both in the early afternoons and overnights. If you remember Peter, you know the quality has got to be high.

In the evenings and on weekends, you’ll recognize other WWFM voices that have made their way west, including David Dubal on “The Piano Matters,” Mike Harrah on “The Lyric Stage,” Carl Hemmingsen on “Half Past,” and rotating hosts on “Sounds Choral,” alongside other syndicated programs that include “Classical Guitar Alive” with Tony Morris, “Pipe Dreams” with Michael Barone, and “Exploring Music” with Bill McGlaughlin. In addition, I must say, it’s good to be able to hear “Collector’s Corner” with Henry Fogel again.

In the days of the internet, it’s not only the maiden’s heavenly fisherman who realizes there are plenty of fish in the sea. If you’re tired of the blather-and-evaporated-milk approach to classical music programming, give KWAX a shot. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Whether we’re on different continents or on opposite coasts, the music brings us closer. Expand your horizons, with “Nippon Notes from Naxos,” on “The Lost Chord,” this SATURDAY at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (that’s 7:00 PM BACK EAST) on KWAX.

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Here’s the schedule at a glance. Clip it and save!

PICTURE PERFECT – Fridays on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD – Saturdays on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Streaming here:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

IMAGE: The road to wisdom is paved with broken radio

May 13, 2023
WWFM Quits & My Shows Find New Home on KWAX

The official line is that, as of the end of April, my weekly shows, “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord” have “sunsetted” on WWFM. I’ve got documentation to the effect and announcements were made over the air. So going forward, whatever the station decides to do in terms of maintaining the illusion of my continued employment there, up to and including rebroadcasts of any of my recorded material, don’t you believe it. Barring extraordinary measures on the part of management – beginning with a little basic human kindness and ending with actually paying me again, for a change – after 28 years, WWFM and I are quits.

That said, the shows are syndicated, and I am in the process of taking over distribution from home, with the production of all-new programs. Which is great, because my hands have been tied since the pandemic broke across New Jersey in March 2020 and all part-time employees were barred from entering the WWFM studios. For over three years.

For now, I enthusiastically endorse listening to the shows on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon. They’ve got a friendly and knowledgeable crew out there, overseen by the benevolent Peter Van de Graaff, whose Beethoven Satellite Network was also dropped from WWFM some time ago, in favor of the blathering hosts and bleeding chunks of music (up to ten fragments an hour) from Classical 24, an inferior service out of Minnesota, now ladled out by WWFM for 20 hours or more of its broadcast day.

KWAX is classical radio the way it used to be, with complete symphonies and concertos, chamber and instrumental music, and choral and vocal works, presented in a respectful, intelligent, and entertaining context. What’s more, Peter is on the air much of the time, as weekday morning host (in addition, his Beethoven Satellite Network runs overnight), and since the station is on the West Coast, everything is three hours behind Trenton-Princeton, so he doesn’t go off until 3:00 in the afternoon EDT! I’m in paradise. I think you will be too.

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

To emphasize my sense of liberation, this week on “Picture Perfect,” I’ll be shaking the dust off my boots with an hour of music about prison breaks.

Indomitable Steve McQueen does hard time on Devil’s Island in “Papillon” (Jerry Goldsmith); Paul Newman sticks it to The Man in “Cool Hand Luke” (Lalo Schifrin); Tim Robbins makes good use of a Rita Hayworth poster in “The Shawshank Redemption” (Thomas Newman); and an all-star cast, led by a barbed-wire hopping McQueen, flee their Nazi captors in “The Great Escape” (Elmer Bernstein).

Let’s face it, nobody looks good in orange. Grab a shank and a file, and get yourself free. We’re bustin’ out of the joint, THIS FRIDAY AT 5:00 P.M. PACIFIC TIME (which translates to 8:00 PM EDT, a good time for listening on the East Coast) on KWAX.

Here’s the schedule at a glance. Clip it and keep it in your wallet!

PICTURE PERFECT – Fridays on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD – Saturdays on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: Gazing deeply into my backside, as I tunnel out of a bad situation

May 12, 2023
Raritan River Music Festival: May Concerts

The Raritan River Music festival will continue this weekend, with its second concert (of four) held in historic venues in West-Central New Jersey throughout the month of May.

Festival directors Michael Newman and Laura Oltman of the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo will join the Bergamot Quartet on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Stanton Reformed Church for “Laments & Dances: Music from the Folk Traditions.”

The musicians will celebrate Philadelphia-born composer Arnold Black, who would have been 100 this year. Black, who was afflicted with cerebral palsy, nonetheless earned degrees for violin and composition from the Juilliard School and went on to perform with the NBC Symphony and as assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony and National Symphony Orchestras.

As a composer, he provided music for the play “Ulysses in Nighttown,” starring Zero Mostel, and the film “Illuminata,” directed by John Torturro. For television, he scored segments for “3-2-1 Contact,” orchestrated Schubert for the Nickelodeon series “Little Bear,” and worked on the animated specials “Simple Gifts” and “A Soldier’s Tale” for R. O. Blechman.

Black’s “Laments & Dances,” based on melodies by the 17th century blind Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan, will be performed on Saturday. If you take a fancy to it, Newman & Oltman made a recording of it, which is available on the Musical Heritage Society label. Also on the program will be new works inspired by traditional music as interpreted by Ledah Finck (Irish), Anna Roberts Gevalt (Appalachian), and Princeton’s own Dan Trueman (Norwegian).

Black’s influence will continue to loom large over the remaining concerts in the series, as he also helped found western Massachusetts’ Mohawk Trail Concerts in 1970. Next week, on May 20 at 7:30 p.m., the Mohawk Trail Piano Trio will perform works by Anton Arensky and Florence Price. That concert will be held at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville.

Finally, Black’s chamber work, “Serenade for the Grand Canyon,” will be included as part of a celebratory concert inspired by the long-running Grand Canyon Music Festival. GCMF founders, flutist Clare Hofmann and harmonica virtuoso Robert Bonfiglio, will be joined by electric violist/composer Martha Mooke and the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo.

The program will also feature “Fairy Fantasy,” a new work commissioned by Raritan River Music from venerable Cuban composer Leo Brouwer; and a new piece by Diné-American composer Raven Chacon, recipient of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music. That concert will take place on May 27 at 7:30 p.m. at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Pittstown.

Last Saturday’s concert of the Four Nations Ensemble performing music by François Couperin and friends at Clinton Presbyterian Church is now posted on YouTube, for your enjoyment, at the link.

For more information about Raritan River Music concerts, visit raritanrivermusic.org.

PHOTOS (counter-clockwise from top): the Bergamot Quartet, Arnold Black, and the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo

May 11, 2023

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