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The Charlotte Symphony Orchestra hosts a rally in Uptown Charlotte at Trade and Tryon Streets tomorrow, Thursday, August 27, at noon, and WDAV will take you there.
Midday host Jennifer Foster brings you updates on the Charlotte Symphony festivities live from the scene at Independence Square. Listen beginning at 11:30 AM on wdav.org and 89.9 FM. For all the details about attending the rally in-person, read the press release.
POSTED 8/23/09 -- Mr. Michael Cimbala, 60, of Charlotte, died August 17, 2009, at Carolinas Medical Center Main, after a sudden illness. Michael was a violinist with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra for 35 years and a member of the American Federation of Musicians. Music was more than a profession to him, it was a calling.
In addition, he was a kind man, a sensitive man, a great storyteller and was endowed with a wicked sense of humor. He was often approached by audience members who told him how much they enjoyed watching him perform because of the expression on his face and the way he moved to the music.
Michael is survived by his wife of 40 years, Janice Cimbala, son Nathan Cimbala, daughter-in-law Marion Burch Cimbala and grandson Dylan James Cimbala of Austin, TX, several cousins, and his extended family -- past and present members of the Charlotte Symphony.
No formal service is planned, but those who wish to honor his memory are asked to perpetuate Michael's love of music by supporting the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra with either donations or attendance. The 2009-10 season-opening concert, Beethoven's "Emperor," is dedicated to Michael's life and memory.
The Charlotte Symphony Orchestra hosts a rally in Uptown Charlotte at Trade and Tryon streets, at high noon on Thursday, August 27th. Ensembles of Charlotte Symphony musicians will perform, and Governor James G. Martin, Chair-elect of the Board of Directors, will speak.
"This has been a challenging and eventful summer for the Symphony," says CSO Executive Director Jonathan Martin. "Throughout these months, we have been encouraged by the tremendous show of community support, from the generous Summer Pops donations and increased annual fund giving to the strong subscription sales. The Symphony is working diligently to become a healthier institution both financially and artistically, and we will be sharing exciting news next Thursday of our progress so far."
The Charlotte Symphony Orchestra is the largest performing arts organization in the Charlotte region. The Symphony opens its 78th season on September 11 and 12. This season marks Christof Perick's ninth and final season as Music Director. Music Director Designate Christopher Warren-Green will succeed Mr. Perick in the fall of 2010. Learn more about the Charlotte Symphony at http://www.charlottesymphony.org.
August 7, 2009 - WDAV 89.9 Classical Public Radio today announced two new staff appointments aimed at strengthening the station's use of multi-media to engage new listeners. Lisa V. Gray has joined WDAV as Director of Marketing & Communications, and Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr has been hired as the station's first multi-media producer.
"The public broadcasting landscape is changing before our eyes," says WDAV General Manager Benjamin K. Roe. "In addition to our traditional broadcasting of WDAV's programs in the Charlotte region at 89.9 FM, we are now broadcasting around the world via streaming audio and video on our website, via the iPhone Public Radio Tuner and through iTunes. We've launched marketing efforts on Facebook and Twitter - and every day, we see new opportunities to reach more people. This is a brave new world for those broadcasters who can adapt quickly. Lisa and Jeffrey both have had extraordinary success in fast-changing environments. I am thrilled to have their innovative thinking at WDAV."
Ms. Gray is a Davidson-based internet marketing consultant who launched her own practice two years ago to help entrepreneurs and nonprofits integrate online tools with traditional marketing efforts. She has been active in the Charlotte regional arts community for 16 years, serving in executive positions with such organizations as Charlotte Trolley, Inc. and the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. She has acted as WDAV's interim director of marketing since August 2008 and is responsible for planning and executing WDAV's comprehensive marketing and public relations strategy through traditional and new-media methods.
Mr. Freymann-Weyr (pronounced "Frime 'n' Wire") comes to WDAV after 13 years at National Public Radio where he served as a producer and editor for such programs as Performance Today, Morning Edition, and the new NPRMusic.org website. He is a film-scoring graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston and attended Haverford College as well as the University of Michigan's famed School of Music, from which he holds a Bachelor of Music degree. As WDAV's multi-media producer, he will create original online content and expand WDAV broadcast content for viewing and listening on wdav.org.
About WDAV 89.9 Classical Public Radio
Celebrating its 31st year on the air, WDAV 89.9 is a member-supported public radio service of Davidson College. WDAV serves a 22-county region centered in the Charlotte, NC metro area that ranges from Rock Hill, SC to Galax, VA. To listen to WDAV live online 24 hours a day, visit www.wdav.org.
POSTED 8/4/09 ON BEHALF OF JOHN SYME
In my six weeks of drive time across the United States of America this summer, geography was not the only thing I covered. I was all over the musical map, too: rock'n'roll (of course); country (unavoidable, and fine by me---most days); jazz (for short periods); classical (not available in some states); get-it-on blues (void where prohibited); pop (exact definition depends on the town; I heard some fine nouveau-California-pop songs in San Diego that I haven't heard before or since); and that egregious call-in show with easy-listenin', lovey-dovey "Delilah" (you can run but you can't hide). Okay, there was no rap or hip-hop on any of my playlists or stations, so I guess I wasn't all over the musical map. So sue me. Stuff works my nerves.
Me, my Tilley hat, my dog Dodger's hindquarters, in my driveway on our day of departure: June 13, 2009. (Photo credit: The lovely and talented Jennifer Foster '92, announcer and producer, WDAV 89.9 FM Classical Music Radio, a listener-supported service of Davidson College.)
Anyway, with a total distance traveled topping out over 7,000 miles, the long way out to southern California (Gertrude Stein was right about L.A.) and back again, I also had ample opportunity to employ sundry of our modern music industry's delivery formats, in addition to making overweening pronouncements on said music's actual content.
I listened to the radio, I listened to the iPod (on my early-model car's late-model Pioneer stereo, as well as with personal earbuds doing yoga at the Grand Canyon), and I listened to retro "cassette tapes" from my personal "stash." Even more retro than cassettes: Once on my trip I had the chance to listen to actual "LP" "albums" on "turntables," thoughtfully provided in guest rooms of the ACE Hotel and Swim Club in Palm Springs, California. Festive! Really, who could have known I would have occasion in 2009 to feast my ears once again on a vintage vinyl version of Barbara Mandrell's "Sleeping Single in a Double Bed"? Honestly, I never would have guessed that, would you?
When extreme desert temperatures fried my iPod, and I was traveling too fast from one boondocks to the next to get decent highway radio reception, I relied on my own collection of vintage cassettes---frozen in time on my first cross-country trip the summer of 1989 and thawed out now in the searing noonday sun of this present Mojave moment, on the selfsame butt-scorching front seat of the same old 1967 Mercury Comet convertible that I was driving back then. Sometimes I wonder about me.
One difference between then-and-now recording'n'playback protocols that struck me while listening to those cassettes was the long blank spaces at the end of a side. Remember those, when the playing times didn't match up, so there was a big ol' chunk of nothing but magnetic hiss in there at the end of side B? Even the professional tapes had that going on. Oh well, cassettes were an improvement over eight-tracks, which simply gashed your favorite song down the middle. For the record, for my 14-year-old self, that would have been Jackson Browne's "Here Come Those Tears Again." ("Baby, here we stand again/Where we've been so many times before...")
This time around, I was on vacation, with no wristwatch and no particular place to go. So, rather than fast-forwarding through the recorded voids on my old cassettes, I let them play through, occasional empty space for thinky thoughts.
First, it occurred to me that the commercial radio stations I had been listening to contained not any tiny fraction of a nanosecond, atall, that was not filled with either music, noise purporting to be music (kids these days...) or breathless jabber. Second, I thought, Hmm, that's just like the rest of the world: filled up with way too much of the irritatingly insubstantial and the deeply unimportant.... I mean, is it too much to ask that there be just a teensy pause now and then between this barrage of auditory stimuli, just a little space to put in between my thoughts, in order that they might, you know, like, fully form? If you can't pause, could you at least slow down? Why, nowadays with the Internets and all, not only is every cranny filled with jabber of one sort or another... no, even the spaces behind that are filled with hyperjabber, all too often signifying, at best, not much. Gripe, harrumph....
But I digress. The reason all this occurred to me all over again when I rolled in home to Davidson is that I realized how much I had missed the unhurried, deliberate and dulcet tones of WDAV 89.9 FM Classical Music Radio, a listener-supported service of Davidson College. And I'm not just saying that because station manager Ben Roe kicked in some gas money for some blog entries. That gasoline is long gone, and I'm saying it anyway: WDAV is one of the things that is good for a world that too often ails me. I had listened online to WDAV 89.9 FM Classical Music Radio, a listener-supported service of Davidson College, a few times in my Motel 6 rooms, but through those long miles in the car across Kansas (and Kansas, and Kansas, and...) I missed the station's presence on the pre-set button of my Pioneer.
Classical music, of course, represents another time, and so another take on time itself, and thus on form, and on content, than the jammed-up overloads of today. But just so: WDAV is a lively, consistent and soothing soundtrack of my workaday world, brought to me by my Bose, my car radio, and the desktop boombox of my officemate Bill Giduz '74. Plus, lucky me, the people of WDAV are my next-door work neighbors on Main Street in Davidson. We have good fun, whistling while we work, so to speak. I give them my jar of pennies when it's their fund drive time, and they supported me when it was my fun drive time! (Sorry, that one was too obvious, a little College Relations humor, there....)
So when I do this trip again in 20 more years, here's hoping that the music delivery systems of that day will mean that I'll be able to just stream WDAV straight into my car. In the meantime, it's good to be home.