wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Comment from Timothy
Date: April 14, 2008, 7:30 pm

Now I really really like this piece. I forgot the name of it. But it is so lyrically haunting. It has such a Bartok feel.

Comment from billyboy
Date: April 14, 2008, 7:56 pm

this one ,overdubbed clarinets??
one-two,one-two-three….
what time signature is that?

Comment from eric
Date: April 14, 2008, 8:37 pm

I’m enjoying tonight’s show but nothing so far makes me want to shout. Just wanted to mention that the Reich clarinet piece made me think of Meyer Kupferman’s ‘Moonflowers, Baby!’ for solo clarinet, which I think I first heard on New Sounds, and don’t hear often enough. If you don’t know the piece, I think you’d enjoy it.

Comment from dave
Date: April 14, 2008, 9:12 pm

Pairings:

Lyle Lovett & Van Cliburn

A couple of good ‘ol Texas boys…

Comment from Sejal Sutaria
Date: April 14, 2008, 9:17 pm

Your shows are wonderful for the breadth of music they cover, your insights and thoughtful questions, and your passion for what you do. I recently began a job s an assistant prof teaching British, South Asian, and postcolonial lit at Monmouth University after graduating from U of Michigan; your statement about the importance of accessibility and making the unfamiliar available to people by breaking down the notions of ivory tower elite so they can make pieces their own excited me. I think this was during an early interview you did as you were beginning at WNYC. About dream tickets? Yo Yo Ma, (I’m blanking, does this have a dash?) and Steve Reich would make an amazing combo, both seem interested in what Ma describes as those moments of creativity between wakefulness and sleep, the unconscious conscious. As a poet this appeals to me. There are surely others, will keep thinking. Sweet names? Ah, this is so personal, my family is South Asian, Indian, so I find that selected Indian and English endearments are both heart warming, but in very different ways. Looking forward to what unfolds on the show and the comments list. Thanks!

Comment from Pete
Date: April 14, 2008, 9:45 pm

You can read more about the late night show (with pics) here: http://www.feastofmusic.com/feast_of_music/2008/04/post-1.html

Dream Ticket: Coltrane and Steve Reich, no doubt.

Comment from alan
Date: April 14, 2008, 10:26 pm

When Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Mah teamed up to do their Hush album, that blew quite a few minds. The synchronicity of their styles and blending of their tonals were simply amazing. The music was just lush. It’s a fave.

BTW, an aside, did you ever find your keys?

Comment from Tom, Cooper Sq.
Date: April 15, 2008, 7:21 pm

Rumsfeld at his most refreshing. My my.

Grand Central Terminal is a 24/7/365 aleatory orchestra, although few can hear it as such. To reach beyond expectations of instrument-timbre, beyond rhythm, beyond melody, beyond harmony, the mind awakes.

Yes!

Mingus at Town Hall plus Eric Satie [to keep Charles a little more brief and keep bluring the musical scales and modes. ]Ciao, T.

Comment from Greg Fuchs
Date: April 15, 2008, 7:36 pm

Yo La Tengo and Other Dimensions in Music.

The did play together, simultaneously at a benefit we put on to help musicians affected by Katrina.

They played a totally an amazing cover of Ooo Poo Pah Doo by Jessie Hill, a New Orleans soul classic. It was the sound of angels, the mix of avant garde jazz and weird rock.

Comment from Bloom
Date: April 15, 2008, 7:46 pm

Mr. McKnight:

The music you play is certainly interesting - when you remain silent long enough to allow us to hear it.

Please, please, please stop talking over the music. Just put on a recording and let it play.

It is obvious that you have a deep interest in and passion for the variety of musical selections that you play, but your program-hosting style is really, inescapably irritating. As a listener, I find even your tone of voice unbearable; it sounds both pedantic and sometimes rather clueless at the same time (which is surprising for someone who is obviously intelligent and informed about his subject).

Please stop talking and just play the musical selections.

I really miss the days when David Garland hosted “Evening Music.” In my opinion, his “Spinning on Air” program is the ONLY reason to listen to WNYC anymore.

I do not mean for my comments to sound harsh but I just cannot support your continued presence in the “Evening Music” program-host’s role. Maybe you could help program the station’s musical offerings off the air, not as an on-air presence.

Good luck and please stop talking.

Signed: A once-dedicated, now disappointed WNYC listener and supporter

Comment from CJ
Date: April 15, 2008, 8:49 pm

You are a much welcome addition to WNYC! The way you go about presenting your show indicates that you have put some thought into it and are actually enjoying yourself. Please continue the fine work.

PS - My Dream Tickets would be Peter Gabriel and Leonard Cohen and/or Leonard Bernstein and Dave Brubeck.

Comment from Michael M
Date: April 15, 2008, 10:19 pm

I do not usually post to blogs, but I just have to say… KEEP ON TALKING! I enjoy your style and have appeciated each show more than the last. Thanks.

Comment from Peter
Date: April 15, 2008, 10:29 pm

Playing the adagio movement from the Mozart clarinet concerto all by itself?

That’s the last straw. I feel like I’m listening to Musak in an elevator or, worse, to WQXR, which is what you’ll drive me back to with you’re incessant over-the-music chatter and vapid, it’s-all-good programming.

Well, it’s not all good. Some of us don’t use the radio as an innocuous background soundtrack to ironing or doing the dishes but as a chance to engage with serious music, old and new, familiar and strange. I know we’re a miniscule minority, but WNYC was one of the very few stations where we could still indulge that passion and now we’re losing it, too.

James Jacobs does a sterling job as a commentator and programmer on the overnight show, but does an interest in hearing contemporary and historical “classical” music now mean one has to stay up all night?

Friends say, you can always listen to BBC 3 over the internet, which is true, but what a shameful indictment of New York, supposedly the most culturally sophisticated city in the world, to be forced to tune in to a British station in order to hear what composers, ancient and modern, have to tell us.

WNYC maintains good standards with its daytime political and cultural programming, shows that any reasonably intelligent and engaged person can enjoy and be informed by. Why not apply the same values to evening music instead of broadcasting lowest-commom-denominator pablum (like the unspeakable piece of piffle playing right now at 10:20pm)?

I guess I just have to accept that I’m not your intended audience and leave it at that. But I do think it would be wrong to stop listening without at least this little squawk of protest.

And now I’m going to check out what’s on BBC 3.

Comment from Tom, Cooper Sq.
Date: April 16, 2008, 12:27 pm

Gotta love the disagreements and the suggestions. Irritation, when it appears in us, is very often not generated by what’s playing to our ears, but rather by what we force upon the audible from our expectations (from an insist that there be conformity to a manner or content that we have concluded is somehow “proper” or even “perfect”). As Voltaire pointed out, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” A meal with companions needs its unpredictability; it’s spirit of tolerance, openly active listening, or else the dining experience will fail.

#10 Bloom & #13 Peter, in speaking up about the strain they feel are usefully reflecting how discrete some end-of-day sensibilities are. They wouldn’t tell their feelings without sincere foundation. Programming choices and presentation-manner both have to set priorities, even if those priorities are somewhat experimental, somewhat anchored in personality and it’s learning. Okay. Is it really muzak? I dissent.

To my ear, Evening Music is a “broadening” resource, part reminder of things I have some acquaintance with, part introduction to things not listened to before, or not yet listened to deeply enough. The broadcast is not solemn and not concert-hall. The host connects with energetic surprises, and I find that fact warming and illuminating. In my courtroom, I decide who speaks and how much, when it’s on the record and what’s expunged, but radio is alive with my not having those detailed controls, and, in its manner, radio is dialogic. The quality of “aliveness” ( requeing, a hum for an F note, a hesitant pronunciation in an announcement, an occasional glibness, the approachable sharing of a personal memory or question) these are no error and have strong value for community listening. The program feels positively NOT hyperprogrammed, nevertheless it’s smart and engaging.

I find the shrill chafe about “lowest-common-denominator” and “shameful indictment”, the appeal to NYC “sophistication” in contrast to BBC “values” rather off the mark, and ill attentive to a more-encompassing and therefor genuine standard of excellence. Anyone can easily hear that the BBC 3 is uniformly complacent and rank anodyne. Please don’t be co-opted by the easy rather than the insightful. Evening Music isn’t pretentious. It’s effective. Its vox humana is an agency making personal contact. It’s not effete and not sparklingly cosmopolitanized. Good thing. In the fine array of WNYC programs, what’s offered in Evening Music’s current presentation feels right to me, including the vulnerable voice in the old Center Street studio reaching kindly into my family’s home. I welcome others’ views. Ciao, T

Comment from Tom, Cooper Sq.
Date: April 16, 2008, 7:48 pm

Hey Terrance,

Piffle, while often used as a noun, originated from the intransitive verb “to piffle” (apparently combining to piddle and to trifle). “Piffling” as an adjective is also an old usage.

When used these days, “piffle” has a feeling of forced anglophile wittiness rather than playfulness and it’s connotation is sharply derisive. Because it’s a word that’s now archaic, it reflects back on its user more than on the subject to which it is directed, unless you use it, as you have tonight, by “stage-lighting” it into irony. T

Comment from debbie
Date: April 16, 2008, 10:14 pm

the blog is archaic; it took me too long to find on the page! love the roch, loving the show…

Comment from karen
Date: April 17, 2008, 8:16 pm

Hi Terrance~

I’ve really been enjoying your shows since you came aboard Evening Music. I’m curious as to your musical background. Thanks for keeping me company weekdays.

~karen

Comment from vikki
Date: May 21, 2008, 10:31 pm

Hi Terrance,

I just started listening to your show. I really enjoy the things you share both musically and inspirationally. Keep up the great work. Now this is a good show!!!