Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Radio

Classical Music Surprise WWFM This Thursday

Surprise!

I’ll be filling in for David Osenberg this Thursday afternoon on The Classical Network, which means we’ll have three more hours together in which to enjoy some of our personal favorites.

These are pieces drawn from the 88 playlists submitted for last week’s “Play It Again” membership campaign. Naturally, we couldn’t get to everything – we still won’t – but maybe some of your favorites will turn up alongside those of other WWFM listeners. Of course, we hope that we strike upon some of your favorites every day of the year and perhaps introduce you to some new ones.

Your contributions have allowed us to discover new worlds and share music of fantastic beauty for the past 35. If you donated last week or at any time over the last twelve months (or, for that matter, within the entire existence of the station), you’re the best. If you have not donated, please consider doing so. It may seem like a bottomless pit, but if we’re to think of it that way, so is food shopping, a trip to the gas station, or putting a new roof on the house. And those things aren’t even fun! If not for the generosity of listeners like you, there would be no WWFM. I offer this as a gentle reminder that your contributions are always gratefully accepted at wwfm.org.

We’ll begin today by sampling the artistry of LaShir, the Jewish Community Choir of Princeton. The choir’s director, Marsha Bryan Edelman, will be along to tell us all about the history of the organization – the oldest Jewish choir in Central Jersey that does not serve the liturgical needs of a synagogue – and its upcoming spring concert, which will take place at Westminster Choir College’s Hillman Hall this Sunday at 2 p.m. The program, which will be made up of repertoire sung in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, and English, will be offered free and open to the public.

In addition, we’ll be sure to celebrate the birthdays today of two fabulous conductors, George Szell and Neeme Järvi. I venture to guess there will be a little something for everyone, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 7, 2018
The Longest Goodbye on WPRB 103.3 FM

The longest goodbye, right now on WPRB 103.3 FM.

June 3, 2018
WPRB Farewell Show This Sunday

We’ll meet again
Don’t know where
Don’t know when…

I hope you’ll join me this Sunday morning on WPRB for my final show of the spring season. It’s Memorial Day weekend, of course, so there are several ways I could go with this. Last year I played music by and about musician casualties of war. Another possibility would be to share music about memory and contemplation. I could also focus on the great outdoors, since Monday marks the unofficial beginning of the summer season. Or I could go for the low-hanging fruit and simply kick back and cruise with an all-American program. Any way you look at it, you know there will be plenty of music that will be worth your while.

After a lot of hand-wringing, I am still conflicted about not submitting an application for the summer. I love doing the show at WPRB. I find the freedom to do my own thing to be highly rewarding, and I know many listeners respond to the creative themes and unusual discoveries. I have also had the satisfaction of interviewing dozens of visiting musicians and representatives of the local arts community. But I find in doing the early morning shift I frequently do not get a decent night’s sleep. This has had a ripple effect in my life. When I did the show on Thursdays, I’d break for lunch and then head over to my day job, where the law of diminishing returns meant that I often couldn’t finish my production work until after dark. On Sundays, I drift around in a fog and often wake up the next day with a headache. I am drinking more and more coffee in an attempt to overcome the perpetual fatigue.

The recent change from five-hour classical music shifts to three has reduced my ability to secure interview subjects – as, probably, has my voluntary move from Thursdays to Sundays – and quite frankly I can’t explore the themes in a three-hour format to the depth I once could in five. A lot of the fun for me was in the challenge of coming up with five hours worth of circus music, or music inspired by Joan of Arc or the Olympics or arctic exploration, or exhaustive tributes to Einojuhani Rautavaara, Charles Koechlin, and Richard Arnell. It turns out I am a marathon runner, not a sprinter. Who knew?

Without the interviews and without the long-form format, and without a good night’s sleep, the only things keeping me going are my unspoken pact with the audience and the friendships and relationships I have formed at and through the station. These I do not mean to undersell. Everything I have done at WPRB has been done for love and for personal satisfaction. It is a volunteer position, remember. I am simply getting too old and have been too busy to keep putting myself through the grind if it doesn’t bring the satisfaction a five-hour Thursday shift once did.

Also, I suspect the listenership is a little more sluggish early on Sundays, something I had not anticipated when experimenting with a move to the weekend. The phone and internet activity doesn’t build until I am practically off the air. I guess when people have to work, they have to be up and they are listening.

At any rate, I thank WPRB for the opportunities I have enjoyed over the past three years. Who knows, I may apply again in the fall, if they’ll have me. Or in a pinch I could step up as a substitute. I hope you will continue to support Marvin, Bob, Toby, and the rest, as they continue to provide the kind of fascinating and off-beat programming made possible only at a place like WPRB. It’s radio the way it used to be, before it was spoiled by The Man.

Start stockpiling your rotten tomatoes. I sing my last, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. I’ll listen for your dispassionate “slow clap” as I take my final bow, on Classic Ross Amico.

May 26, 2018
Floodgates of Music on WPRB

Après moi, le deluge!

With still more heavy rain on the way this weekend – and rain in the forecast through at least Tuesday – I’ve affixed pontoons to my vehicle in my grim determination to fulfill a promise to open the floodgates on great music.

This Sunday morning on WPRB, we’ll immerse ourselves in works related to excessive precipitation, swelling floodwaters, and uplifting rainbows. We’ll be sopping with symphonies, soaking in semi-operas, inundated with incidental music, and saturated by symphonic poems.

French toast will be served tempest-tost, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. You’ll never Noah what hit you, on Classic Ross Amico.

May 19, 2018
Ross Amico’s Mother’s Day Radio Magic

Once upon a time (today), Classic Ross Amico beat the alarm on Mother’s Day. He drank some caffeine, took a quick shower, and double-checked his radio bag, just to be sure it was still full of music inspired by nursery rhymes and fairy tales and bedtime stories he recollected from childhood. So much nostalgia and security was contained in that bag that he had to try very hard to resist falling back to sleep.

In fatigue and despair, he cried out to his fairy godmother, “O Fairy Godmother! Why must I get up so early on Sundays, when other, more sensible mortals get to sleep in on their days off?” Then he glanced in the bathroom mirror and noticed that he had been transformed into a raccoon.

So he traded the family cow for some magic coffee beans at the House of Wawa and set off for Princeton University’s Bloomberg Hall. There he found the equipment left in disarray by DJ Bluebeard, who had evidently been cavorting with the Bridge Trolls. It was with some frustration and embarrassment that he began his carefully prepared air shift, since the condition of the studio directly impacted the playing of both underwriting and music, until he reconnected the machinery and located the station log, which is often the first quest of the morning. But when at last he played his first selection, the good people of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and more distant lands awoke delighted from their enchanted sleep, and were refreshed by the Raccoon-Man’s noble sacrifice.

The Fairy Godmother smiled and waved her magic wand, and after spending the rest of Sunday in a fog, Classic Ross Amico awoke as if from an enchanted sleep to discover that it was Monday, and time to go back to work.

Not all the nursing takes place in the nursery on Mother’s Day. I’ll call for my pipe, I’ll call for my bowl, and I’ll call for my fiddles three, from 7 to 10 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. You’ll find me living still, if I am not yet dead, on Classic Ross Amico.

May 13, 2018

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