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8:03 AM | Christa Wessel
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 Explore With Us!
We're planning two expeditions this fall, and we hope you can come with us.
In August, All Classical is organizing a trip to Santa Fe. You'll get to experience "Falstaff" at the Santa Fe Opera (plus a backstage tour and a private viewing of their historic costume collection), and intimate music-making from the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Then there's the Georgia O'Keefe museum, a walking tour of old Santa Fe and lots of yummy regional cuisine. Take a look at the Santa Fe itinerary and book your reservation today -- the deadline to register for this trip is Monday, July 7.
 In October, we're off to Venice, Verona and Vienna. I'm particularly excited about this trip, because I get to go with you! I've always dreamed of seeing the city that inspired some of the greatest composers... in Vienna we'll take tours of the homes of Schubert, Mozart & Beethoven. We'll also enjoy some world-class concerts and dining. In Verona we sleep in a villa and trace Romeo & Juliet's footsteps. Venice, of course, holds languid gondola tours and the magnificent La Fenice Opera House. You have a few more weeks to make your reservation for this "3 Vs" tour, but why don't you book your spot now before the tour sells out? Here's the European itinerary -- come travel with me this October!
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9:22 AM | Sally Lewis
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 It's the Little Things in Life...
If you happen to drive by our station this week, you may not notice anything extraordinary; however, for those of us who make the trek daily, it is a joy to enter a building that is not disfigured with weeds, litter and overgrown shrubbery. A wonderful volunteer of ours from up the I5 corridor in Washington, Dale, answered Mary Evjen's request for landscaping assistance. There is never a better time to spruce up than just before the new boss hits town!
By the way, Jack is making repainting his office a top priority for settling in. We have a lot of painting equipment among us and are getting the paint today. Is there anyone out there willing to help with this task! We serve great Kobos coffee, have lots of cold water and at least a classical CD or two ready as a thank you for the effort. Give me a call, toll-free, at 1-888-306-5277 if this sounds like a volunteer job with your name on it! |
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10:13 AM | Maxine Frost
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I like to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with composers. But I cheat a little--by widening the scope of potential connections by mixing up composers with other kinds of works of art. Literature, for instance.
The other day I was thinking about Edvard Grieg and Shakespeare, specifically Hamlet. I don’t know why the two things popped into my head, but I started playing Six Degrees. How many connections, and through how many degrees, would I be able to make between the two?
Grieg’s ancestor’s were Scottish. Macbeth was Scottish, and Macbeth (obviously) is a Shakespeare play. Not good enough? Okay, Hamlet was a Danish prince, and Grieg wrote his famous piano concerto while on holiday in Denmark. A little tenuous maybe, but you can see what I'm getting at. How about this one--Peer Gynt, the Ibsen character on whom Grieg based a set of orchestral suites, has been considered (by literary theorists and at least one psychologist) to be basially nuts. Another famous madman in literature was--you guessed it--Hamlet! And there’s a reference to Norway in the first scene of Hamlet, spoken by Horatio. Norway is where Grieg was born. Still not impressed? How about this one: Tchaikovsky dedicated his score to Hamlet (I never knew there was one either) to none other than his friend Edvard Grieg.
The picture is my attempt to portray Grieg as a Hamletesque figure. I was surprised that it suits him so well.
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8:00 AM | Sally Lewis
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 Special Thank You
We are All Classical are still reeling with the delight of our 25th anniversary gala -- we were thrilled with the great turn out, the honoring of our past, the celebration of the present and the look to the future.
As it is my turn for the blog, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the role of our Board Chair, James Draznin. At the event, he got to announce the completion of our Permanent Home on Your Dial campaign, complete with heralding trumpeters! What is little known is the great leadership he has brought to this effort. As a leading development professional in Oregon, he was in a unique position to chase those early, big gifts that helped launch us toward success. At the end of the campaign when we seriously had asked everyone we knew to give, he knew that we would need to return to early lead donors for second, wrap-up-the-campaign gifts. Once more, James made the hard calls, urged the sitting Board members to dig deeper and saw that success happened.
His tenure here is over and his shoes will be hard to fill. He has been a wonderful support to me for the past 3 1/2 years and I greatly appreciate his counsel and help. |
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12:47 PM | Ed Goldberg
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 Turn Your Radio On
The staff of KBPS recently had an email discussion of radio in the past. That led me to ruminate.
I was a kid in the last years of network radio, not much different from the programming on network TV. Dramas, sitcoms, game shows, kiddie shows, even classical music.
There was the NBC Symphony of the Air, the Bell Telephone Hour, and the Metropolitan Opera (still going, of course), among others.
I listened to The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Jack Armstrong: All-American Boy, all the usual kid shows. The horror and science-fiction programs, Lights Out!, X Minus One, The Inner Sanctum, all took advantage of “the theater of the mind,” the idea that nothing anyone can show you will be worse than the pictures in your head. Some of these shows still give me the creeps, and the single most famous radio program of all time was Orson Welles doing “The War of the Worlds” on the Mercury Theater on the Air in 1938.
The shows, in general, were no better or worse than what is currently available every night on the boob tube, but the good stuff was unmatched. Comedies, especially. The gentle whimsical satire of “Vic and Sade” has no modern equivalent, and may never. The idea of what’s funny has changed too much. And, among the domestic sitcoms, Burns & Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Bickersons, the stand-out for me was The Easy Aces, Goodman and Jane Ace.
If you can imagine George and Gracie written by the wits of the Algonquin Round Table, that might be close.
The illustration is the New York Times headline the morning after Welles scared the country. |
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