Marty Ronish

Marty Ronish is an independent producer of classical music radio programs. She currently produces the Chicago Symphony Orchestra broadcasts that air 52 weeks a year on more than 400 stations and online at www.cso.org. She also produces a radio series called "America's Music Festivals," which presents live music from some of the country's most dynamic festivals. She is a former Fulbright scholar and co-author of a catalogue of Handel's autograph manuscripts.

“Live” is Alive and Well in Boston

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Making a mistake on a blog is a little like fighting with your spouse. It’s the kissing and making up that’s fun. When I wrote about the CBC earlier, I grouped WGBH in with a bunch of other stations that I thought were doing less live music. I’m delighted to be wrong! Brian Bell writes: I’ve been doing the live Friday afternoon broadcasts of the BSO since 1991, when William Pierce retired and have been doing Sunday afternoons at Tanglewood, all live, and since this past year, we’re doing the Friday night … Continue Reading

WGBH responds

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Authormarty72x72 I got it all wrong about WGBH, so I want to set the record straight. Ben Schwarz, the marketing manager for Boston’s legacy public radio station WGBH sent me an email with this information.

Your comments about WGBH Radio, in particular, are not an accurate assessment of us as a radio station. In the past year, we have, if anything, increased the amount of classical production on 89.7, as well as supporting our all-classical HD service and internet stream. Here are some points you should be aware of.

* In a typical week, we produce and air two to three live three live classical music performances from our newly built Fraser Performance Studio (to see more about this space, please see http://www.flickr.com/photos/wgbhradio/collections/72157604184594526). As I’m writing this, Augustin Hadelich is performing in our studios, and we’ve recently aired performances by David Deveau, Irina Muresanu, Heng-Jin Park, Bion Tsang and Anton Nel, and Kim Kashkashian and Robert Levin.

* In the past year, we’ve produced and aired more concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra than ever before, building on our live broadcasts of the BSO on Friday afternoons. For example, next month we will be the only radio station to record and broadcast the full five acts of the BSO’s performance of Berlioz’s Les Troyens.

* In the past year, we’ve recorded and aired more concerts by local New England ensembles for our Sunday Concert program than ever before. For example, in the past few months we’ve aired our own recordings of Opera Boston, Boston Philharmonic, the Handel & Haydn Society and the Boston Lyric Opera; just to name a few.

I think you’ll agree these are examples of a robust and relevant broadcaster of classical music. While we are thrilled that technology has allowed us to share this effort with online and HD radio listeners, I assure you we’ve taken nothing away from anyone. All of our audiences have benefited, regardless of the platform.

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Some Thoughts on the CBC Kerfuffle

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Authormarty72x72 A few years ago I did a recording session in the big studio at the CBC in Vancouver. The folks there were extremely proud of their in-house orchestra, the only broadcast orchestra left in North America. The studio is gigantic, maybe three times the size of NPR’s Studio 4A. In fact, the entire facility is spectacular, and in many ways, spectacularly underutilized.

What will happen to the studio now that they won’t need it anymore for the orchestra? Will they keep it a studio and invite other orchestras in to perform? Who would pay for that? Or will they make it into offices? It’s too big for rock bands.

There are support groups popping up on Facebook, trying to save the CBC Radio Orchestra. There’s an online petition you can sign at this site, where you can also find out the details about demonstrations to be held all over Canada tomorrow (Friday, April 11th).

It makes me sad that the orchestra is going away. I hate to see musicians put out of work. Having to depend on the government for funding is a recipe for failure, as American orchestras discovered decades ago.

What makes me really sad, though, is the CBC’s willingness to kill fresh, live radio content that you can’t get anywhere else in the world. Canadian composers will have to find other orchestras to perform their music. And Canadian classical artists coming in to play live? fuhgeddaboutit. CBC Radio 2 is replacing much of their classical music with other genres of music.

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