THIS IS A TEST

Well, I was not going to do this, but I see that Peter Hum’s Jazzblog.ca did it.

Probably not for the same reason.

I need to run a test. I need to see how long this post is going to take to get on my Facebook page. WordPress has not seen fit to give us a simple Facebook application like so many other sites. WordPress has several procedures for the owner of the weblog to put a Facebook thingy on the page. But they are all pretty technical. I write about PubRadio, Classical music, and Jazz. I do not do really technical stuff.

WordPress is free. So are all of the other pages where the owners have seen fit to use the power of Facebook to spread their gospels by making it easy for us to get their stuff on our Facebook pages.

Just today, Innova.mu put a notice in their Google Group that we could link to them so that their news would get out. Previously, when I got news of a release by an Innova artist, I would have to do it myself.

WBGO also set up a similar thing.

All kinds of my RSS feeds on news, tech, Jazz, computing, and Classical music have Facebook or “Share” blocks that contain Facebook as a choice.

Even World Community Grid has come up with a Facebook link.

This is not a WordPress problem as such. One of the procedures that gave us, putting a feed link into our Settings, does work. But it takes forever.

So, now let’s see what happens…
WordPress could help us out with a real Facebook application.

Paul Winter Consort – Winter Solstice 2009 Concert is now available for listening.

This concert is given annually in New York City at The Cathedral of St John the Divine. This is the 29th year of this festival of international sound, a reunion for many of Paul Winter’s musical associates.

The host, as usual, is none other than John Schaefer of WNYC New York Public Radio, where he hosts New Sounds and Soundcheck

Give yourself a treat and listen to the two parts of this concert.

Boston and New York

Recently in Boston, WGBH took over the operations of WCRB, a commercial Classical Music station and shipped off to this outlet all of its musical programming.

At first blush, this looks like a repeat of what has recently happened in New York City. WNYC purchased the operations of WQXR. To recap events in New York City, while certain music related programming like Soundcheck and New Sounds have remained at WNYC 93.9 FM and the 93.9 web stream, music qua music is aired at WQXR FM 105.9 and the 105.9 128kbit web stream. WNYC2, the 24/7 music web stream, has become Q2, streaming at 128kbit stereo, and has remained as eclectic as was WNYC2.

Back to Boston. First, I cannot even find a link for WCRB, everything I try, including a search, brings me back to WGBH. Maybe someone can correct me on this, and give me a link to WCRB.

Second, while we at WNYC/WQXR are able to express our opinions in comment pages provided by parent WNYC, I found no such facilitiy at the WBGH web site. Searching for comments on the changes in Boston, I wound up at boston.com, a service of the Boston Globe newspaper. I found nothing at WGBH. Maybe someone can point out the error in my search.

At another weblog, someone wrote that the citizenry in Boston appeared to be less irritated than the citizenry of New York City. But that is not how the comments at the Boston.com article seemed to me. They were in the main negative, but, I must admit, without the vitriol of the comments I have read at WQXR.

What needs to be understood is that these two situations are but the tip of the iceberg, examples in cities big enough to draw a crowd. This shipping off of Classical music programming to HD radio (for cars?) and the internet (generally the same stream as HD radio) is going on all over the country because of reduced listenership at commercial stations, reduced membership at PubRadio outlets, just an overall diminution of availability for a variety of reasons. A great place to read about this is in the archives at a great weblog, Scanning the Dial. There is nothing new in the Boston or New York situations.

I am a Public Radio zealot, WNYC fanatic, and now a WQXR cheerleader. I think that we in New York City, and I have to say also, the Classical music listeners in Boston, are fortunate that our local institutions, WNYC and WBGH, have found ways to keep Classical music on FM. This is the hard choice, the choice which may or may not pay for itself. The easy choice, taken by so many of the outlets discussed over the passed year at Scanning the Dial, is the internet, with its obvious limitations of tethering to the house or office.

I think that WQXR will be okay, and I certainly hope the same is true for WCRB.

Search for Internet Radio Streaming Music

Public Radio Program Directors Association presents a web site by which you can search for music being streamed on line in a variety of ways: Composer, genre, stations. Check it out.

http://radiotuna.com/

Two Great Radio Projects on New York Public Radio

Today is the first day of Eight Days of Steve, a celebration of the life and work of Steve Reich at Q2 on WQXR.
Visit http://www.wqxr.org/blogs/q2-blog/2009/dec/10/maximum-reich-eight-days-steve/#z and also

http://www.wqxr.org/articles/q2-music/2009/dec/10/maximum-reich-interviews/.

You can listen on line at http://www.wqxr.org/q2/#z .

I thought that Sequenza 21 might have picked up on this, but I have not seen anything. Maybe someone from that weblog can correct me.

On parent station WNYC is the Jazz Loft Radio Project, which grows out of the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies Jazz Loft Project. In the radio project are a series of ten documentary episodes. At The Jazz Loft Project site is a great deal of text material.

Learn and enjoy.

Some really cool connections

First, in the Jazz Loft Radio Project, at WNYC which is a partner of The Jazz Loft Project being managed by the Center for Documentary Studies, in Epsisode 2, Sara Fishko talks about the work of the photographer W Eugene Smith, who was responsible for the Jazz loft. One of the photos is of Smith’s son and daughter walking into what looks like a halo of summer light. The photo was used in Carl Sandburg’s book “The Family of Man”. It was the last photo in the book. I have the book. The photo was used by E.R. Squibb & Sons, my dad’s employer at the time, in a advertisement. I think the ad was titled “security”. My parents found and purchased an oil painting of the picture. I have the oil painting.

[The Jazz Loft was organized and managed by Life photographer W.Eugene Smith in 1954. It lasted until about 1965. It was a loft in the Flower District in Manhattan. After about 1:00PM until about 3:00-4:00AM, this district is empty of people. So, Jazz musicians could congregate there after their club gigs and jam all night. Which they did.

Smith set up sound equipment and reel-to-reel tape recorders and recorded thousands of hours and miles and miles of tape. The center piece of the radio series involves Thelonious Monk getting ready and rehearsing for his famous 1959 Town Hall project. But, for a Jazz fan, there is much much more,including a book, "The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965 [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover) .]

Second, one of the major figures of the Jazz Loft was Hall Overton, by day a Classical Music faculty member at Julliard, but by night a Jazz pianist and teacher at the Jazz Loft. So, in one interview segment of Maximum Reich
at WQXR’s Q2, a 1999 New Sounds program, Steve Reich describes Hall Overton as his “first teacher”.

Third, on that same program is Mark Stewart, of the Bang On A Can All-Stars plays the single live part for the piece “Electric Counterpoint”, a piece for thirteen electric guitars written for Pat Metheny. Pat Metheny is on the twelve recorded tracks. Well, it is the same Mark Stewart who plays some lead guitar on Paul Simon’s 2000 Paris “You’re the One” concert

An Ipod to replace a Zune? I don’t think so.

I maintain four 120 gig Zunes to hold all or most of my music and video. One is for Classical Music and Spoken Word; one is for Jazz; one is for Rock and its offspring; one is for videos.

So, one Zune dies. I have a contract on it. I take it back to the big box store. Because I have the contract, they give me store credit (it’s beyond their anything goes 30 day return policy) for the Zune AND the contract. They no longer have 120 gig Zunes.

I consider a 180 gig ipod. No, the last time I installed iTunes it disabled an optical drive with high and low filters that my OEM had to correct. This must be a common problem with iTunes on some Windows machines. The first tech broke my “rule of six” – six calls to get to someone who knows what you are dealing with. He knew exactly what to do. He took over my machine and in two minutes in the Registry got rid of the filters. I immediately had the optical drive back.

Then, I thought, what the heck? Most ipods are used on Windows machines just because Apple has such a tiny part of the installed market of PC’s.

So, I pick up a 180 gig and an accessory kit. When I go to pay, the clerk offers me a contract, which I decline. He says, and I paraphrase, you know, when the battery dies in a year, this contract will replace it for free. Die in a year? Yes he says, it is right in the fine print on the box.

Thanks, but no thanks. I am not going to buy a product where the box tells me it is guaranteed to fail in a year.

I went home. I went to Amazon where I found 11 new black and 22 red 120 gig Zunes in amazon’s inventory. For cheap. US$209.00 with no shipping charge.

If they get down to US$169.00, I will probably buy a couple more for insurance,

A Great Sunday Morning at WPRB

What a terrific surprise!! Marvin Rosen substituting for the regular host, Jeannie Becker (?) and doing a Jazz program.

This is great listening. I would encourage Marvin to bring out some of these other sides of himself to the weekday audience. While Marvin is today featuring Jazz for Poland, I know he is very widely erudite in American Jazz of all periods. By the way, if Marvin chose to do a program of early Rock and Roll, it would really be a sensation. Marvin Rosen is just plain Mister Music. We are lucky to have him.

Marvin’s regular programs, “Classical Discoveries” and “Classical Discoveries Goes Avantgarde” can be heard on WPRB on Wednesday mornings. Be there, Aloha.

Invitation to the Ghost

This is an invitation to the ghost of the old wnyc and wqxr to come here and comment to me directly his concerns about my posts at the “blogs” provided by WQXR .

You will see the reply button in the upper right hand portion of the weblog template.

I hope to hear from the ghost.

The Digiteria Gets a Makeover

Last Saturday it was rainy. So, no cycling. Leaves pretty much down, so no hiking. So, I decided to head for the cellar and see if I could get rid of junk. We really do not have any junk anymore. I visit the cellar regularly for this purpose.

But, I did cast my eye on two tables for which I have yearned for quite some time. I decided that the time had come to get these two tables up to the second floor and into the Digiteria. The tables are too heavy for me at my advanced age. I got a couple of friendly neighbors to help.

So, how does this fit in with the core theme of this weblog? Only tangentially. One needs to be happy with a room if one spends a lot of time in it trying to be creative. That’s the connection.

The problem with the old tables was that they had bracing underneath which precluded any drawers. So, with no storage, the place was generally a mess. The brackets came up from the legs to the top at an angle. So, here are the results:

So, the tables were in the cellar; the large white open cubes, one under each table, were from my daughter’s room. The vertically stacked drawer/shelf combos to the left under the netbook were also from my daughter’s room. Even the white shelf on the cube under the dask table was cut from a shelf from our old kitchen.

The only money I spent was for the two sets of drawers under the desk table. I was surprised that I could not find anything like them in Staples or Office Depot. They are from Ikea.

I am extremely pleased with the results.