A: I'm going to be talking about it as a love of mine, and something I want to share. Classical music is is one of those mysterious things like fine wine or foreign films, where people feel like they need to know something about it to enjoy it. I want to dispel that notion and share a few pieces that helped me discover my love for the music. Ultimately, if people are willing to give the music a chance, I hope I might provide them some direction for finding their own entree into finding this music that I love so much.
Q: How did that love start for you?
A: Because of my profession, radio. I started in commercial radio early in my career, doing everything from Top 40 to smooth jazz. From the time I was 6, I wanted to be in radio. I was very lucky I got to live out my dream and make a living in the business. In the '90s, I lost my job — low ratings, it happens — but there was an opportunity at the classical station in Portland, Ore., where I was living at the time. I knew a little bit about classical, and since English was my second language, languages came easily to me and I was good at pronouncing names of composers and pieces. For a while I was looking for another job as a program director, but then I had my first "driveway moment."
Q: What’s that?
A: That's an expression in public radio for those times when you hear a story or a piece of music in your car and sit in your driveway after you get home to hear the title, or hear the end. So, I don't want to give away my whole talk, but my driveway moment was Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini." And I recognized the amazing thing this modern Russian composer did with a simple melody by an 18th century Italian composer — and it blew my socks off. Pretty soon, I wasn't looking for another job. I stayed with classical.
Q: Why do you think so many people are intimidated by classical these days?
A: A couple of reasons. One, admittedly, has been how the music has been presented. I preface this by saying I think our orchestra here, the Dayton Philharmonic, is one of the most progressive in the country in how it presents music and how accessible it is; music director Neal Gittleman has been great about that. But as a whole, I think the whole concert experience can be stifling — you go to a hall, get a program, sit for long periods, only applaud at the appropriate times. My own industry was also not that good at presenting the music for a long time. I don't mean how classical radio is today, but in the last few decades of the 20th century, they did themselves no favors by describing the music in terms that went over most peoples' heads. At best, they made it seem to the general public they had to know a lot about the music to enjoy it; at the worst, they made the general public feel stupid. It had to change, and thank goodness it has.
Q: Well, on your station, you tell stories about the composers, give context, that sort of thing. You make it enjoyable.
A: We certainly try to make it more universally relatable, rather than discuss it in specific musical terms. I mean, it's far more memorable to describe the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth as "fate knocking at the door," rather than to describe the first movement as being in "the traditional sonata form in which the main ideas undergo elaborate development with many keys and a dramatic return to the opening section," to quote from a music dictionary I have here.
Q: “Fate knocking at the door.” I like that.
A: There are real stories, real lives that were lived behind the composition of this music. That, to me, is far more interesting than an analysis of the music.
Q: Well, what you’re talking about is also the way people relate, pretty successfully, to more popular forms of music.
A: Right. Music at its best is felt — a heart thing, more than a head thing.
Q: What else to you listen to?
A: Everything from jazz to hip-hop to classical.
Q: What about classical radio?
A: It's evolving. The whole radio industry is evolving as a medium, thanks to satellite and Internet technology. People are accessing us more and more from mobile devices. We've got to stay responsive to that. As far as WDPR, it's pretty remarkable that a city the size of Dayton has a station devoted to classical 24 hours a day — many larger cities no longer can say that.
Q: What’s the secret?
A: For the same reason we still have a great orchestra, a full-time opera and ballet company, and an art museum with a collection many larger cities would be envious of. I think when faced with challenges — and Dayton has had its share of those, certainly — we hold onto the things we can that contribute to our quality of life. I remember a pledge drive a few years ago in the middle of the downturn when we had unbelievable support. I think people get tired of bad news, and they think, "Maybe I can't take vacation this year, but I can give $50 to my public radio station. There's nothing I can do about all the bad news every day, but I can do this."
Q: If Mozart were around today, what do you think he’d be up to?
A: Whatever it was, I think he'd marvel at how many people are still enjoying his music today. When you think how music was distributed 100 years ago, on paper, he'd marvel how many people have such easy access to his music. But I think he'd lament that music has become such a passive thing, as opposed to active.
Q: You mean, that in his day, if you wanted music, somebody had to play it.
A: Or you played it yourself. He'd probably think it was a bit sad that people could enjoy it without a lick of talent. That the ability to make music is less valued now.
Q: That’s a driveway-moment insight, I’d say.
A: The thing about driveway moments is they're not necessarily literal, they're figurative. Pausing for a moment to marvel, say, at being able to enjoy Mozart by just pressing a button, and think of all the remarkable layers in between — from his writing it, so many years ago, to it coming out of your speakers, and all the steps in between those two things. Driveway moments are about pausing, and really appreciating what is right there in front of you.
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