Granted, this post is about a jazz station, not a classical station. But when it comes to giving thoughtful music with modest commercial appeal a safe haven on the airwaves, we’re all in this together, right?
Middle State Tennessee University in Nashville could be looking to shut down and even unload WMOT-FM, an around-the-clock jazz station that claims a 40-year history. Local NBC affiliate WSMV reports that MTSU is trying to cut as much as $19 million from its budget. With that sort of burden, you might understand how a station ends up in this precarious situation.
From the WSMV story:
The thought of WMOT’s airwaves falling silent is breaking hearts. …
“I bawled my eyes out” over the first rumors of the station’s troubles, said MTSU senior Alli Scott, a music and theater major who works at the station for practicum credit. She is a DJ during the afternoon broadcast.
“It would be devastating to so many people” if the station shut down, Scott said. “As far as the students are concerned, it means so much to us to have a professional station here on campus. If it’s cut, we won’t get it back.”
Unfortunately, as too many in classical radio know, it’s a scenario that has played out many times before — even before the economy fell apart. Radio stations end up looking like easy targets. And in a city like Nashville, an FM license could well go for a nice sum.
It’s great to see that friends of the station have been staging benefits to raise money and rally support. Of course, benefits only bring in a one-time infusion of funds, which may do little to persuade administrators looking to cut ongoing costs. But more importantly, perhaps the show of public support could prove to MTSU officials the inestimable value of furnishing their students and a city with the art form of jazz, and of introducing would-be broadcasters to the field.
And here’s a related footnote: Virginia lawmakers are considering cutting all funding for public broadcasting in the state, according to Richmond BizSense.com. This would affect WCVE-FM in Richmond, which airs jazz and classical music, as well as other stations throughout the state. Update 2/18: More in the Charlottesville Daily Progress.
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I am glad to see coverage here on a Jazz service. Kudos to Mike for bringing in the subject.
I have come from being a Classical Music listener to a Jazz listener, based upon source material:I became a Classical Music listener because of my father’s love of the work and his immense collection of classical LP’s. From 1964 to 1967 I lived near Philadelphia. So I had available to me WHAT, a 24 hour Jazz station wherein worked Sid Mark and the late Joel Dorn, the Grammy winning Jazz producer. Dorn had to be in his twenties. Now, in 2008, I came to the radio documentary work of Steve Rowland (http://www.artistowned.com)looking for his eleven-part project “Leonard Bernstein: An American Life” of which I heard parts on WNYC (http://www.wnyc.org), which had been basically a Classical Music station. At the site, I saw Steve Rowland’s “Miles Davis Radio Project” and “Tell Me How Long Trane’s Been Gone”, both multi-part radio documentaries of two Jazz icons. At least the Coltrane series had been broadcast on WNYC. Because of some early difficulties with the Bernstein downloads, I became acquainted with Steve, and we had a serious email exchange as I used the two Jazz series two get into Jazz.
So, WNYC, at least in part a Classical Music service, has recognized the value and validity of Jazz. Nowadays, at wnyc2 and at Evening Music at WNYC-FM, one is likely to hear quite a bit of Jazz along with the classical offerings.
Another Public Radio station to which I belong is WPRB, Princeton, NJ. WPRB (http://www.wprb.com) has really excellent Classical Music programming every weekday morning from 6:00-11:00AM. But, from 11:00AM to 1:00PM, they serve up excellent Jazz programming.
Jazz on the radio, Jazz on Public Radio, is in the same boat as Classical Music. We need to think of them both as having the same problems and needing the same kinds of attention from the listening community.
In order to defend consideration of Jazz radio here, I suppose one must first defend Jazz. Here are three tidbits:
McCoy Tyner was the pianist in the John Coltrane Classic Quartet (1962-1965). In the John Coltrane documentary described in the previous post, the point is made that Tyner learned the use of “fourths” from the music of Paul Hindemith.
In Alex Ross’ “The Rest Is Noise”, Chapter 5 on Sibelius, describing the Fifth Symphony, pgs 166-167, Ross says.”…At the beginning of the Fifth, the horns present a softly glowing theme, the first notes of which spell out a symmetrical, butterfly-like set of intervals: fourth, major second….(Fifty years later, John Coltrane used the same configuration in his Jazz masterpiece ‘A Love Supreme’)….”
Finally, on Elliot Carter, in the same book, Chapter 11, pg 404, Ross says,”…Carter’s strategy was to juxtapose independent streams of activity in overlapping, intersecting layers…Such effects were commonplace in Jazz…Michael Hall compares Carter’s rhythmic layering to the disjuncture between Art Tatum’s left and right hands (if anyone doesn’t know who was Art Tatum, check him out in Wikipedia) and also the most complex works of [Charles] Ives.
If one were to take advantage of the downloads at Jazz Profiles from NPR (www.npr.org/music)one would constantly hear about the influences of Classical composers, e.g. Bartok, Hindemith,Darius Milhaud, etc. on Miles Davis, Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, and the like.
I am not going to belabor this blog with a lot of consideration of Jazz. I just needed to make the point that Classical Music and Jazz have points-many points-in common.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Richard — I wasn’t aware of the connections with Hindemith and Sibelius. Really interesting. Another oft-cited example is the influence of Stockhausen’s music on Miles Davis’ work from the late ’60s and into the ’70s. Here Mingus writes about his fondness for Stravinsky, Debussy and Strauss.
I’m especially interested in jazz radio now that I’m hosting on WPFW here in Washington, D.C., which airs primarily jazz.
Mike- I am relieved that I was not out of place with the above remarks.
If you want to consider Jazz here, I would be very happy. I do not consider Jazz and Classical as two different camps. But, of course, you have a good focus and you and Marty do a great and necessary job not done elsewhere.
I have a whole separate feed list for Jazz, apart from this list for Classical Music/PubRadio. There is nothing like this blog for Jazz. The best all around aggregator of feeds is artsjournal.com, and there is only one good Jazz feed, Rifftides. Insidethearts.com is great, but narrowly based.
So, maybe somebody could get up a good new blog to deal with the problems of Jazz today.
Do you think it should be about jazz’s problems in general, or problems with jazz radio in particular?
Boy, what a softball question. Jazz has every problem plaguing Classical Music but magnified ten times.
First, Jazz radio: I just looked at publicradiofan.com. The number of stations airing or streaming Classical Music far outnumber those playing Jazz. The biggest local PubRadio station in this area, New York/Northern New Jersey is WBGO, Newark, NJ. They have just had a fund drive. Their goal for the drive and the numbers of folks joining or contributing were astonishingly small when compared to their “peer” in Classical Music, WNYC, New York City.
In Classical Music on PubRadio, There is a market for suppliers of programming like Classical 24 and the recently gone C.P.R.N.
The number of Jazz stations is so small that this kind of concept just has no validity.
And Jazz if fractionated into many more sub-genres than is Classical Music. Also, in live performance, while Classical Music has always been a concert hall experience, Jazz has had the difficulty of coming out of a lounge and club scene-and all of the darkness that implies- and into a concert hall experience. In spite of the successes for Jazz in the concert hall, that legacy still lingers.
The most positive thing that one can say about Jazz and its audience or audiences is that they are a very committed bunch.
So before any new blogging adventure, you can do all kinds of research, read Jazz blogs like Rifftides at artsjournal.com, talk to personnel at other Jazz outlets like WBGO, invite in your own audience from your own program, and see where it takes you. Look at Jazz in your own local scene. Clubs? Concerts? Those small retailers who still carry Jazz LP’s and CD’s?
Boy, sometimes, in spite of the fact that people like you allow people like me to pontificate on your sites, I am glad to be just a listener and not trying to fill your shoes.
Re WBGO vs. WNYC, keep in mind that many of the people giving to WNYC may listen to the station primarily for the news/talk programming.
There actually is a 24/7 satellite service for jazz stations similar to Classical 24 — JazzWorks. It’s produced by WDUQ-FM in Pittsburgh. I’m not sure how many stations carry it. It’s been around a while.
Mike-
Absolutely correct about WNYC. As a matter of fact. As a matter of fact, the critic Greg Sandow (http://www.gregsandow.com)in a Wall Street Journal article from May 21, 2002 wrote about the loss of day time Classical music at WNYC. He tells the reader that actually, the music audience at WNYC was quite small, maybe 12% of the listenership.
Thanks for the tip on Jazzworks, I found some carries listed at http://www.publicradio.com, and I will give a listen.
There’s also WFMT’s Jazz Satellite Network (partner to their classical Beethoven Satellite Network): http://www.wfmt.com/main.taf?p=12,8
(but my favorite jazz programming comes from my old station, WFIU Bloomington http://wfiu.org/nightlights/ )
There are many more things from posts around here I’ve been wanting to comment on, but there’s a lot of production (and packing!) to be done before leaving for AMPPR conference this weekend.
continuing to love reading, even when I’m too frantic to comment,
-Mona
Whoops!! That’s http://www.publicradiofan.com.
Regrets.