An Interesting Day

Yesterday I attended the University of Colorado's Conference on World Affairs. For the last 10 or 12 year I've been going fairly faithfully, but this year I've not attended as much. The topics were a bit lack-luster and it's the same old crew saying the same old things to an overly crowded audience. However, one session piqued my interest, Siriusly, Podcasts, Pandora and the Future of Radio. It was okay but nothing great. Margot Adler made an interesting comment which confirms what I've thought all along -- "Classical music radio has problems". Colorado Public Radio's classical music station basically went off the air when it changed it's broadcasting power. It was an economic decision due to a shrinking listener base, or that's what was intimated by the session moderator, Dan Meyers from Colorado Public Radio.

Another panelist in this session, Molly Sheridan, mentioned that the "gatekeepers are changing" and with the Internet you don't have to listen to the tepid local NPR broadcasts. You can listen select from thousands of stations world-wide. I completely agree with that, though my lousy Comcast connection still causes me grief.

Margot Adler also pointed out that there are still millions and millions of listeners in cars where the Internet isn't really available. Just this morning I noticed an advertisement for an Internet car radio. It was a device which would do a Blue Tooth connection to your iPhone. It seems like a bit of a kluge to me, so I think I'm going to pass on that one for now, particularly since I don't even have a cell phone.

The panelists' comments also got me thinking about their different view of music. They kept referring to "songs" and "artists" and "tunes" -- what the software and services focus on today. The iPod Shuffle plays stuff randomly -- image listening to an opera or a string quartet that way! As a classical music buff, I'm more interested in the "composer" and the "composition" and music has order. Is it a generational gap or an genre difference or is it just me?

Finally last night I went to this year's final Pendulum concert at the University of Colorado's music school. The quality of both the performances and the compositions by these these undergraduate and graduate students was very impressive. I particularly enjoyed a string quartet by Dustin Rumsey called "Lighting Dreams" and the "Piano Quintet No 1: Scenes from Childhood" by Greg Simon. Simon was the winner of an annual award for the best student composition for this quintet and it seems well deserved. The performing string quartet in both pieces was the Tasman String Quartet. I've enjoyed them many times over these last two years while they studied with the Takács String Quartet. I wish them well as they head off to Champagne-Urbana for further studies.

I normally enjoy the summer in Boulder without all those college kid. The area is a little less crowded. However, I'll be missing the music school students and the Pendulum series.