Observing yet another repeat

Email received on May 15, 2008 - WGBH 89.7 Presents a Virtual First on May 27 with Live Second Life® Concert Event. On Tuesday, May 27 at 11am, WGBH 89.7 will embark on one of the more innovative classical music events in recent memory when pianist Jeremy Denk performs a concert in the WGBH Fraser Performance Studio that will simultaneously broadcast live on air, on the web, and in the virtual online 3-D world, Second Life®.

Overgrown Path August 14, 2007 - Next month, a British orchestra will stage the first full-scale symphonic concert on Second Life.The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic has created a virtual, 3-D version of its concert hall and on September 14 users of the website will be able to attend a concert led by the orchestra's chief conductor, Vasily Petrenko.

Ah, I get it, it's a virtual first. Or perhaps this is a record?
Second Life mirror image from here with thanks. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical internet radio - a user's guide

Email received in response to my post This is the future of radio ~ First, we appreciate very much your On an Overgrown Path coverage, including Antoine’s very kind words after using Radeo. We had noticed it, with the help of Google Alerts; and we’ve noticed a number of other blogs covering you since. And, we’re having some great classical activity on Radeo, some of which is apparent on Most Listened under Search!

I was surprised by the comment posted feeling that Radeo is primarily podcasts, and appreciated your response that we are first more than 10,000 radio stations around the world. Our first priority is programmed stations, the simulcasts of broadcast stations and Internet only stations. Shows and their Episodes from Stations is our second priority. And, Podcasts included as Shows and Episodes is our third priority. We have many great podcasts, but that is not primary and some use and exploration should easily confirm that.

Regarding the BBC iPlayer, our view is that this is focused on downloading video programming, and radio is an after thought—the multiple current BBC Players get incorporated eventually. It’s limited to the BBC; and there is no personalization—no presets, interests, or sharing. Our Radeo player is focused on streaming audio programming and video is secondary (although very present). Radeo offers the largest database of audio and video programming worldwide, and encourages easy personalization—presets, interests, share and news emails. Try “The BBC” under our Search tab for essentially all of BBC Radio and much of the rest of their audio and video offerings—easily from one page.

We would like to suggest several ways for you, Antoine, and your readers to share classical music recommendations:

1. First, anyone can Signup with only name, password and email address and begin storing their personal preferences—fast, free and easy. That’s PC and Mac: Windows and Mac OS X operating systems; Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari web browsers; and Windows Media, Real, and QuickTime players. And, with confirmation of their email address, they can Share email their recommendations including descriptions and links which will open Radeo and begin playing the recommendation.

2. Second, anyone can Share their Listener Name and Password with others to allow access by others. Others can be signed in and playing with the same Listener Name at the same time; the preferences are saved when the last person closes.

3. Third, we can fix your preferences as a Profile for your readers, so that anyone can open and play Radeo with your preferences; but only you can Login and change the preferences. And, any Signup from within the Profile, starts with those preferences (rather than our standard Demo preferences). Most easily, this can be a Radeo link from your Blog, which opens the Radeo player with your profile preferences.

As for some recommendations, Antoine seems to be doing well working through our offerings. WGBH Classical HD 2 Station and WGBH Classical Performance Show are very good, in addition to WGBH 89.7 FM Station. Hopkinson Smith lute—recently in Most Listened—is a particular favorite of mine. Radio Latvia Three Klassika is a favorite Station. And, Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Show has great offerings. And, our MyBBC Demo includes Playlist D with latest Episodes of a dozen BBC classical music shows. Also, the Vatican Stations offer some good listening. As you are listening, check under the Related tab for additional, related possibilities—which can be previewed and websites visited, while you continue listening. For links to these stations see below.

We are involved with music. Our recommendations are sincere. It’s worth going through our Standard and MyBBC demos; everything there is considered. Maintaining and expanding our database is a continual process. In addition to our ongoing checking and sourcing, listener tuning attempts with no connection are investigated; and recommendations are appreciated.

And, we also very much look forward to internet radio being available away beyond a computer. But, some computer is now with very many of us much of our day—and radio listening is greatest in the office, followed by commuting. Tabletop alternatives are improving. And, mobile players, including Wi-Fi access, are now appearing and improving. As internet access becomes more constantly available, streaming is generally more appealing than downloading. Try our Radeo companion version beta. The 12 x 4 presets from “desktop” preferences are easily available on a mobile phone with Windows Mobile which including Windows Media Player—with no additional setup: http://www.radeo.net/mobile/.

We look forward to communicating with you further.

Sincerely, Darryl Pomicter, Ressen Design

Links to the stations mentioned above:

WGBH Classical 89.7-HD2, Boston, Massachusetts
Click to Listen

WGBH Classical Performance, Hopkinson Smith plays lute music of Robert Ballard - WGBH Classical Performance
Hopkinson Smith has been described as "one of the world's real masters of the lute". We were honored to have him visit our studio at WGBH to play music of an early 17th century French master lutenist, Robert Ballard, as well as a couple of pieces by his English contemporary, John Dowland. Robert Ballard (Works primarily from the Premier livre de luth, Paris, 1611): Entrée de Luth; Courante [...]
Click to Listen

Radio Latvia Three Klasika, Latvia
Click to Listen

Naxos Classical Music Spotlight, Classical Music Spotlight Special Editon - Class of '38 - A Conversation with Composer Ellen Zwilich
Raymond Bisha chats with composer Ellen Zwilich about her most recent work.
Click to Listen

Ultima Thule Ambient Music, UT 559
A post-classical excursion with Vangelis, Philip Glass, John Tavener and Arvo Part.
Click to Listen

Download the Radeo internet player here. Internet radio is the future, which is why we should all be very concerned about this.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Uncovered - classical music orgies

Following on from the discovery of the Arnold Schoenberg jukebox comes news from Overgrown Path reader Rodney Lister at Harvard of classical music orgies on the internet.

'I was just looking over your list of classical music on the web and noticed that you don't include WHRB, the Harvard radio station, which is streamed on the web. Not only is this the best classical music on radio in Boston (which I guess is like being world famous in Poland), at the end of each term, for about a month, they do "orgies" long series of complete or almost complete recordings or all kinds of things. In years past these have not only included complete Beethoven, Haydn, Handel, Sibelius, etc., but complete Duke Ellington and Cecil Taylor. The station does lots of other things, too--jazz, hip-hop, country music, and Harvard hockey, but the classical music part is definitely worth noticing.'

WHRB can be found on the web via this link. Here is more information on the 'orgies' (the next one won't be until the fall) from their web site, they make BBC Radio 3's recent Beethoven fest look quite tame.........

Legend has it that the WHRB Orgy® tradition began over fifty-five years ago, in the Spring of 1943. At that time, it is said that one Harvard student, then a staff member of WHRB, returned to the station after a particularly difficult exam and played all of Beethoven's nine symphonies consecutively to celebrate the end of a long, hard term of studying. The idea caught on, and soon the orgy concept was expanded to include live Jazz and Rock Orgies, as well as a wide variety of recorded music. The Orgy® tradition lives on even today at WHRB. Each January and May, during the Reading and Exam Periods of Harvard College, WHRB presents marathon-style musical programs devoted to a single composer, performer, genre, or subject. The New York Times calls them "idealistic and interesting," adding, "the WHRB Orgies represent a triumph of musical research, imagination, and passion."WHRB's Orgy® season this January featured the entire musical output of Johann Sebastian Bach in a broadcast uninterrupted for ten straight days.

That last information about WHRB's JSB marathon is interesting. The BBC has already announced they will be following their Beethoven Experience with a Bach Experience the week before Christmas. The BBC spin-doctors will already be working up the story of how they introduced Bach to millions of listeners, and I am bracing myself for the zillion file downloads of the Passions. Interesting that a very good student station in Boston seems to have beaten them to it by a year.

And that mention of JSB takes me to Millenium of Music. Another reader writes telling me..."this was a Washington DC nationally syndicated radio program every Sunday night at 10 PM. The producer, Robert Aubry Davis, collaborated on the show with radio producers from England and the EU. The show was prized by many many listeners and ran from 1980 until just this year when the public station, WETA-FM, committed intellectual suicide by switching to an almost completely 24/7 news and analysis programming."

Millenium of Music is an exploration into the sources and mainstreams of European music for the thousand years before the birth of Bach and has featured such noted performers as Anonymous Four, The Clerks Group, Tallis Scholars, Jordi Saval, Hesperus and many others. The good news is you can still listen to it via WCLV in North-East Ohio via this link. There is a lot of very worthwhile early music in the programme schedule - definitely well worth exploring.

Meanwhile Dave, another Overgrown Path reader, writes with details of an interesting sounding 'on demand' web radio station which may be worth a try......

I run a streaming classical station called Classical Junk. I call it that since I try to play a lot of the not-so-common music that your typical person wouldn't really care for. I also do my best to fulfill listener requests, although sometimes it takes me a few weeks to track down the obscure ones.To get a wide variety of music, I manually create playlists instead of loading a bunch of music and hitting "random". You will always hear a complete work played (versus just one movement of it). The playlists repeat every two days or so, but I'm constantly changing them. You may end up hearing the same work two or three times before it's removed in the next playlist update, giving you a chance to become familiar with it and like it (or hate it) more.

Although quite well known across the US blogs it is also worth giving a 'heads-up' for our many international readers to the very worthwhile Art of the States service run by WGBH Boston (who also offer some worthwhile classical programming). Art of the States offers on-demand web streaming of classical music by US performers, with a heavy emphasis on modern and lesser known repertoire. There is a lot of added value here. The works are all streamed complete, the sound quality is very good, and many are not available in commercial recordings. A bonus are comprehensive programme notes and some good links. The range of composers is very impressive on this serious music 'juke-box' - from Adams to Zorn. Currently there is a 19th-Century south feature running majoring on musical life of the southern United States during the mid-19th century with lots of music files to support it. If you haven't visited Art of the States you are missing out on one of the most useful serious music resources on the internet.

All these stations have been added to the side-bar listing, any other news of 'lateral thinking' web music stations gratefully received via the comments facility at the end of this post.

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Elgar's other Enigma