Always appreciated KUSC for clarifying how the orchestral bgm of Japanese anime and vidya I heard growing up were the legit continuation of a tradition that kept going after the periods the sedate-classics-for-upscale-stores stations lift from
tonight inspired by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto in A minor and the suddenly-fast part of Dvořák‘s American Suite
one of the very many things I like about the LA-based classical station KUSC is their overnight stuff where they play deeper picks and have the rookie jockeys pronounce composer and conductor and performer names and titles from like 3 different minor European languages in a single sentence sliding between native-ish pronunciation for each
now playing: Concierto de Aranjuez
okay this time I’m looking at you Reynaldo Hahn and your le Bal de Beatrice d’Este, it’s kind of fucked up how 1:1 KUSC is with “oh bet you didn’t know about this classical music“ and the ‘90s-ass otaku shit I grew up on, there’s some Ultros fight in there but also some Escaflowne theme?
MY LOCAL CLASSICAL STATION IS MAKING ANIME REFERENCES AHEAD OF THE CLASSICALOID PREMIERE BLESS ALAN CHAPMAN
I even love the weird witch hours of KUSC where they’re running weird shit and breaking new hosts in, all
“Francesco Venturini! Sounds Italian but get this, we think he’s Belgian! We don’t know! Ha!
…
…okay anyway here’s some Antonio Cartellieri”
I 150% support KUSC in their like, quaternary mission of showing how this classical romantic tradition survived the German loss in WWII and the modernist composers to reoccur in Hollywood soundtracks and especially JRPGs
seriously do you know how much shit I realized the Squaresoft greats didn’t come up with
but Nino Rota needs so much annotation, like each 8 measures I need notes on who he stole shit from or who stole it from him
one of the MANY things I appreciate about Los Angeles’ classical radio station KUSC, is that they play good stuff outside of ready narratives
from Mendelssohn and Hoffmeister to the non-austere non-modernist postwar composers
they make me realize how the JRPG soundtracks I grew up with fit into the Western tradition (they very much do!) even… wait
it’s possible this is just a Germano-Japanese styistic progression rather than the Anglo-American I’m used to but
THEY PLAY MUSIC SO WELL I WANT TO STUDY THE COMPARATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORM, C'MON, WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT
hey yo occasional reminder that Los Angeles-based radio station KUSC is an excellent institution that really shows how much more there is to classical music than “famous sedate music for posh settings”
and that it can be streamed no-commercials (well an occasional 3-second reminder that USC is also home to the Mr. and Mrs. Donorsworth Center for Subject Studies) for free
So KUSC is in its pledge drive which means when they’re doing music channel surfers will recognize. They just did “The Mission”, which you know as the NBC Nightly News theme.
You don’t often hear it at full length but when you do it’s John Williams scoring a pretty great self-own: the only good bit is the short, memorable stinger (which is great) but when you listen to the meat and connective tissue of it without some director’s “epic, sense-of-wonder” visual work propping it up (live or as nostalgia) you realize he just sounds like Danny Elfman’s uptight dad
(i.e. when one theme’s reached exhaustion he’s like “uh… how about a whimsical flight of fancy, then a return to the original theme? But not too whimsical.”)
If you live in So Cal and have never listened to this bad ass talk about classical music when it’s late at night and you’re buzzed, you really fucking need to.
For the rest of you in the country, don’t worry. There’s an app.
He’s hosting right now.
Correct. Alternately, stream it from here.
KUSC is amazing. Even when in 6th grade we were tasked to listen to an hour of classical a week for some assignment, it was like meh. Because (& prolly because ad stations only exist to gather an audience) it was just sedate background music for dental waiting rooms and “classy” stores.
KUSC really shows off how much awesome, vital, powerful stuff there’s been over the centuries. Plus the DJs will usually say something interesting on the intro, the outro, or both, that really does enhance your appreciation of the piece. That is when they’re not dropping dry-as-hell humor bombs.
If you live in So Cal and have never listened to this bad ass talk about classical music when it’s late at night and you’re buzzed, you really fucking need to.
For the rest of you in the country, don’t worry. There’s an app.
He’s hosting right now.
Correct. Alternately, stream it from here.
KUSC is amazing. Even when in 6th grade we were tasked to listen to an hour of classical a week for some assignment, it was like meh. Because (& prolly because ad stations only exist to gather an audience) it was just sedate background music for dental waiting rooms and “classy” stores.
KUSC really shows off how much awesome, vital, powerful stuff there’s been over the centuries. Plus the DJs will usually say something interesting on the intro, the outro, or both, that really does enhance your appreciation of the piece. That is when they’re not dropping dry-as-hell humor bombs.
I <3 KUSC because they even try to teach me how Mozart led to Nobuo Uematsu (through Ravel?)