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Playlist: Music Station Picks for November

Compiled By: PRX Editors

Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/76686190@N00/2586271674/">Linda</a>
Image by: Linda 
Curated Playlist

Looking for December music picks? PRX Format Curators are here to help stations quickly locate radio pieces that are more relevant to their local air. Format Curators are very good in their fields: they have proven content expertise and have worked at local stations. They get the challenges of programming to a specific format and a local sound. Here are the November picks for music stations from David Srebnik. David produces Virtuoso Voices, an interview clip and fundraising service heard on 115 stations. As an Associate Producer at NPR, he programmed the music heard on Performance Today, and directed news and music programming at stations in Texas, Michigan, Florida, New Orleans and North Carolina. What David listens for in music programming: "I look and listen for programming that puts the listener first, speaks listener language and answers 'yes' to questions like: * Is it enjoyable, beautiful, entertaining or substantial? * Will it be memorable? * Will it advance understanding and enjoyment of the music? * Will this contribute to making public radio indispensable? "I'm not big on music education on the radio, especially in the form made infamous by the so-called 'old-school' of classical music announcing. "Radio can, however, educate in a compelling and entertaining way. David Schulman's Musicians in their Own Words series and WNYC's Richard Wagner documentaries are good examples of music education without the academic shackles that have made that term deadly on the radio." Hide full description

Looking for December music picks? PRX Format Curators are here to help stations quickly locate radio pieces that are more relevant to their local air. Format Curators are very good in their fields: they have proven content expertise and have worked at local stations. They get the challenges of programming to a specific format and a local sound. Here are the November picks for music stations from David Srebnik. David produces Virtuoso Voices, an interview clip and fundraising service heard on 115 stations. As an Associate Producer at NPR, he programmed the music heard on Performance Today, and directed news and music programming at stations in Texas, Michigan, Florida, New Orleans... Show full description
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Roy Orbison: Black & White Night

From Joyride Media | 00:58:57

Roy Orbison was cool in color, even better in black & white.

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NEA Jazz Master Toots Thielemans and His First Night in the US

From National Endowment for the Arts | Part of the Jazz Masters Moments series | 00:01:30

This ongoing series of 1:30 - 2:00 jazz performer snapshots are both a kick and a delight. While they aren't intended to change the world, they will brighten up your station's sound in the mornings and could fit pretty much anywhere else throughout the day.

The latest entry into the series features harmonica virtuoso Toots Thielemans -- and what happened to this innocent and easily bemused Belgian musician on his first night in NYC.

Others in the series worth your consideration, Marian McPartland Discusses Her Conversations with Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk, Shirley Horn on Working with Miles Davis and Phil Woods On Meeting Saxophonist Charlie Parker. Please don't think of these pieces as a bridge between shows -- they are shows in themselves.

In addition to enhancing your jazz programming, the NEA Jazz Master series could also be a nice flash of light on your News-Information station. They're a nice, quick way to entertain and inform your listeners and to promote your jazz programming and jazz brand. They have station fundraising applications as well.

Others in the series (Ramsey Lewis, Slide Hampton and Buddy Defranco) were reviewed in April 2008. The Dave Brubeck pieces in the series are wonderful, but have an April 2008 Brubeck Festival reference at the end.

The White Album Listening Party: Revisiting The Beatles' Top-Seller (3-Hour / Newscast-Length Version)

From Paul Ingles | 02:41:51

"The White Album Listening Party: Revisiting The Beatles' Top-Seller" celebrates the 40th anniversary (Nov. 22, 1968) of the release of the Beatles scary-new, scary-wonderful, scary-ambitious new recording.

The "Listening Party" puts the Beatles White Album in the center of a circle of non celebrity, smart, non-fanatic, well-spoken and knowledgeable Beatles experts, who share their memories, opinions and stories behind the stories and the recording.

It's great to hear this music again, but beyond quality of the music and the invigorating nostalgia of hearing hit after hit after hit -- is the listening party component of the show. It frequently reaches the high notes on the most important radio "best practices" metric board of story telling and listener focus.

You are not the unwelcome eavesdropper on a bunch of stoned college slackers having a conversation about nothing. This is a conversation with music lovers, and Beatles' lovers (who may have been stoned at one time...just not here).

Remarks and the stories behind "Dear Prudence," "Happiness is a Warm Gun," and "Why Don't We do it in the Road?" feature amusing stories and insight, and they may answer White Album questions we've perhaps been trying to formulate for the last 40 years.

Also fresh -- the discussion brings forward the notion and memory that this was a scary album for a number of reasons -- to paraphrase, "What happened to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand'...where are my Beatles?"

The discussion proceeds by track order, usually two tracks at a time, followed by both songs. Almost each segue from discussion to music generates both a musical "AHA" moment and an satisfying internal organic physical reaction as well -- the kind you get from Bach, Mozart, Bill Evans, Dylan etc.)

The 3-hour presentation of the program, producer Paul Ingles recommends, "Is the best experience for your listeners as it recreates the experience of listening to the whole album. If you can only accommodate a two-hour slot there will be a two-hour version available at PRX."

Three hours is tricky -- two hours is tricky, but your thoughtful, OES promotion strategy (promo materials provided on PRX), the anniversary peg, the 1968 - 2008 connections, the music that still holds up, the stories behind the music and the assembly, tone and flow created by Paul Ingles will likely create a banner day for your listeners and your station.

This could be a Saturday or Sunday afternoon listening and good for any evening -- especially a blue Monday or Friday night. See the PRX page for a range of date specific scheduling options.

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The Tristan Mysteries: The Mythic Mysteries

From WNYC | Part of the The Tristan Mysteries series | 00:16:31

This is just about perfect. "The Mythic Mysteries" is one of five WNYC Radio tributes, explanations and justifications for Richard Wagner's opera, Tristan and Isolde.

Sometimes, rarely, once in a long while, the talk about the music is on the same level as the music itself -- and I'm aware of the potential absurdity of such a statement, considering the music at hand. But, once in a while it happens.

Here in 16-plus minutes "The Mythic Mysteries" investigates, and resolves, the matters of love and longing; unrequited love where hope still remains; adultery; pain before death, pain after death and then letting go after death.

Pow. Deep, deep deep -- but always welcoming and a pleasure to hear, process, and then hear again. "The Mythic Mysteries" offers strong writing, well placed irony and Amy O'Leary's narrative tone and inflections are equally heroic elements.

At 16:32, "The Mythic Mysteries" is tricky to schedule. Consider combining the five parts of WNYC's Tristan Mysteries to create an hour of entertaining and engaging radio -- that just happens to be about opera.

No operatic experience or operatic attachment required for your listeners, and worth consideration for most formats, including news-information. Saturdays on non-MET stations or Friday night after ATC or Marketplace. Classical: suitable for Saturday before the MET; Saturday after the MET.

The MET offers Wagner's Tristan and Isolde on its regular Saturday matinee radio broadcast on Saturday, December 6 at 11 a.m. EST.

Additional Tristan Mysteries Series Segments:

The Sexual Mysteries (14:08): Content advisory aside, this segment is both historically and hysterically revealing and reveling.

The Visual Mysteries (15:54): Director Peter Sellers explains how it's acceptable, understandable and maybe desirable to never quite figure it all out note by note.

The Sonic Mysteries (15:34): College Music Theory courses rarely made such a relevant and contemporary case for this most famous chord of all time.

The Five-Hour Mysteries (16:37): Makes a strong, comforting case that falling asleep during the opera is fine. It only seems like nothing is happening over the opera's 5 hours, but "something is happening all the time." Then there's the sex on the beach at the end. (Content advisory at about 7 minutes in.)


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