Thursday, January 20, 2011

More on the KDFC/KUSC/KUSF Situation

First, see the previous posting on this news for the text of a letter sent by Brenda Barnes, President of KUSC, to that station's membership about what's happening. Thanks to Brian from Out West Arts for the letter!

Second, Peter Hartlaub, who broke the story in the S.F Chron, tells me two things in email (used with permission and thanks):

Third, I sent a question to KDFC in response to their email about the changeover:
Are you retaining the same programming style (individual movements, repertory limited to 1750-1900 except for tonal 20th c. composers, no vocal music or opera) or are you going to improve the programming to something that isn't just "soothing" and "an island of sanity"? 
That is, something people who are knowledgeable about classical music might want to hear.
I received the following response:
We will play more complete pieces and branch out a little but we will still be soothing and an island of sanity.  Thank you for asking!
Brenda [Barnes]
KDFC
I plan to reply - I signed the original email with my KDFC pseudonym, Melissa Linden, and will be decloaking and attempting a dialog of some kind.

If you want to send your opinions about repertory, use the email address comments@myclassical.org. (Not my classical.)

7 comments:

Bryan said...

>island of sanity

I guess they consider anything more adventursome than Eine Kleine Nachmusik to be insane.

Anonymous said...

The reply is not at all helpful. They could hardly do fewer complete pieces or branch out less, since they've actually been contracting their repertoire and fragmenting works more, over the period that they've been Fluff Central. If they went back to where they were ten years ago (when they played lots of complete pieces, so long as those pieces were The Moldau or Prokofiev's Classical Symphony), it's seem like an improvement.

Like you, I hate the "myclassical" moniker. In fact, I hate anything on computers that begins "my ..." I call it "Barney personalization," after the purple dinosaur who convinces two-year-olds that when he turns his big wet eyes on them, he's saying "I wuv you" to them personally. Nobody older than two ought to be fooled by this sort of thing.

Henry Holland said...

They're not going to change.

I listen to KUSC driving to and from work and sometimes at work when my boss lets me control the radio just so that I don't have to hear the soft rock he likes, and I'll say this: I know more about the catalogs of Vivaldi, Telemann and Haydn than I ever dreamed possible and certainly ever wished.

When they do play something totally harmless like Verklärte Nacht, they almost put a warning before it: No! No! It's not that nasty atonal Schoenberg, this is actually pretty and stuff!

They still play single movements or "the last 10 minutes" (!!) of pieces during the morning drive.

The only redeeming features are the live orchestra broadcasts from various places, the Met broadcasts, Jim Svejda in the evenings and sometimes their Modern Music program which still wouldn't play non-tonal music if they're lives depended on it.

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss......

Unknown said...

Before you so self-righteously critique music (though KDFC's endless Dvorak,and Bizet iterations are awful), I suggest you learn to spell.
In your letterhead, it is not "told"
bells but "tolled". And your contributor should know it is Nacht
not Nach regarding Mozart.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Before you criticize my spelling, you might consult any scholarly edition of Shakespeare. Or are you going to argue with the text of the Riverside Shakespeare? On the web, your suggested spelling is found 45 times, mine 34,000 times. You've heard of Google, right?

And lay off my contributors. I don't give a damn about their typographical errors.

Lisa Hirsch said...

And see this new posting

Lisa Hirsch said...

P. S. I've been having excellent conversations with Bryan about music for about 20 years, so I really, REALLY don't give a damn about a typo.