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Searching through my saved photos for some WWFM – The Classical Network memories. Here are four of many. Help us celebrate 40 years with your donation of $40 (or more) at 1-888-232-1212 or online at wwfm.org. Thank you for everything you do to support the music we love to share.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: cueing up a symphony by Janis Ivanovs; group hug with Bill Zagorski and Rachel Katz; between membership pitches with Michael Kownacky; New Year’s hijinks with Carl Hemmingsen
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WWFM – The Classical Network, West Windsor NJ’s classical music station, signed on for the first time on this date in 1982.
I was hired in September 1995 and served as weekend morning host for the next 19 years. After that, I made the move to weekday afternoons to share hosting and programming duties with David Osenberg.
My specialty show, “The Lost Chord,” devoted to unusual and neglected repertoire, aired for the first time in 2003; “Picture Perfect,” my film music show, made its debut in 2010. Though I have not been back in the studios since the arrival of COVID-19 in March 2020, these syndicated shows continue to be heard.
To my knowledge, only Ted Otten, Michael Kownacky, Alice Weiss, and the recently-retired Win Howard have had a longer, continuous association with the station.
So as one of the old-timers, I appeal to those of you for whom the station has made a real difference over the past decades to honor The Classical Network’s 40th birthday with a gift in the amount of $40 – or more, if the spirit takes you.
Call 1-888-232-1212, or fill out the quick-and-easy form at wwfm.org (linked directly here):
Every donation to The Classical Network makes a difference in keeping classical music on the airwaves in our community and streaming around the world.
Thank you for your part in allowing us to share all the great and engaging music that’s continued to enrich our lives over the past 40 years. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Here’s a rare WWFM staff photo taken in the old broadcast booth in 2003. Since then, on-air operations have been moved next door to a computer-laden room with a better window. The room in the photo now serves as one of our production studios.
Pictured, from left to right:
(front) Darlene Berson, Sandy Steiglitz, and Nancy Fish;
(middle) Walt Gradzki, Marjorie Herman, Diane D’Ascoli, Jeffery Sekerka, and Phil Joiner
(back) Bliss Michelson, Alice Weiss, Andrew Rudin, Glenn Smith, and Yours Truly.
Of those pictured, only Alice remains as a full-time employee, with Walt and Glenn returning on a contractor basis. I continue to maintain a toehold through “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord” – a total investment of 27 years.
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For those of a certain era, it was never Labor Day without the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon. The show, presented as a benefit for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, was a star-studded endurance test, with celebrities ranging from Sinatra to Charo to Don Rickles to Midori giving their all, the whole while with a toll-free number superimposed at the bottom of the screen.
The show began on Sunday evening and ran through late Monday afternoon. Jerry would emcee in varying degrees of sleep-deprived dishevelment. By the end, the bowtie was undone and the rumpled shirt unbuttoned, as he wrung out the final dollars and maybe even a few tears from a captivated television audience.
The telethon ran for 44 years, from 1966 to 2010, raising billions for MD research. For a good deal of its existence, it was broadcast from Las Vegas, with Ed McMahon serving as cohost. A super infusion of old-school showmanship – a glitzy, schmaltzy, backslapping, in-jokey exercise, turned to the service of a good cause – there really was nothing like it. It had an inexplicable magnetism, easy to make light of, but hard to look away.
Jerry opens the show in 2006 by conducting Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide Overture.”
Charo
Reunion with Dean Martin
Jerry brings it home with “You’ll Never Walk Alone”
There’s a whole channel devoted to this stuff on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/c/MDATelethon
And another one here
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Cancer has claimed the pianist Lars Vogt.
At what should have been middle age, Vogt was also in the process of branching out into conducting. He served as music director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia from 2015. In 2020, he took up the directorship of the Paris Chamber Orchestra. In June, his contract there was extended through 2025.
Vogt received his diagnosis in February 2021. Sad enough for such a talented musician to be cut down in the prime of life – he was only 51 years-old – but he also leaves behind a wife and three children.
The courage and optimism he conveyed in interviews over the past 18 months is to be admired. R.I.P.
Vogt plays Beethoven, beautifully
With a poignant Brahms encore
Vogt singles out the solace to be found in Brahms, following his diagnosis, here
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I didn’t have a chance to share this earlier. I saw it mentioned on Friday on Leonard Slatkin’s Facebook page. Sadly, the news remains the same. Slatkin’s younger brother, Frederick Zlotkin, has died at the age of 75. Zlotkin (who preferred the original spelling of the family name) was principal cellist of the New York City Ballet for fifty years. Like his parents, he also recorded for motion pictures and numerous contemporary artists – in his case, Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Aretha Franklin, and Neil Young, among others.
Leonard and Frederick were products of an enviable music dynasty. Their father was the violinist Felix Slatkin (concert master of the 20th Century Fox Orchestra), who conducted and made recordings with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Their mother was Eleanor Aller Slatkin (principal cellist at Warner Bros.), who played cello on the soundtracks to dozens of films, including “Deception” (1946) and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977). Both parents were founding members of the Hollywood String Quartet.
Here, from a documentary on Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Zlotkin and Leonard Slatkin discuss, rehearse, and perform Korngold’s Cello Concerto, the work introduced by their mother, who dubbed actor Paul Henreid’s “performance” in “Deception.”
I’ve cued it up to the 28-minute mark, but the entire documentary is worth watching. It includes lots of interesting info about the Slatkins.
My condolences to Leonard Slatkin and the rest of the Zlotkin/Slatkin family.
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