An Active Voice for the Joy of Music : Radio: ON KUSC-FM, Rebecca Davis takes her listeners on daily voyages of discovery, from Bach to Turkish instrumentals to jazz.

Like virtually every other mainstream arts organization in Los Angeles, radio station KUSC-FM--which features classical music--has been wrestling with the problem of how to include more ethnic and non-traditional music in its repertoire without insulting the classicists with trendiness or patronizing the underrepresented with mere good intentions.

Along came Rebecca Davis. Before she took over KUSC’s afternoon “Commuter Classics” in November, 1992, she had never hosted a radio program before. It showed. She had the punctilious bravado of the deeply insecure. She was dry, formal, correct; her voice droned on with pedagogical earnestness.

But what a voice. Generous, darkly opulent, cello-rich, its deep-river sensuality flowed under her academic frost with the suggestion of hidden pleasures awaiting release. Soon enough, they broke through. Whether it was Bach’s Italian Concerto or Turkish instrumental music featuring the plaintive reed instruments Mey and Davul, Davis’ sheer love of music began to sweep everything before it, concluding with a jazz piece at the end of her watch.

One day, after listening to the soulful cavernousness of a Russian bass-baritone sing a folk song a cappella, she said, “I have no idea what he was saying. All I know is that it’s beautiful.” With that, listeners sensed that now she was taking “Commuter Classics” out on a voyage of daily discovery, and it had become both moving and fun.

“I had everything I was going to say written out beforehand; I mean everything ,” she now says. “My hand was trembling over the console. Wally Smith (KUSC president and general manager) would come in and say, ‘Davis, get rid of those notes!’ Being someone who’s studied music thoroughly and trying to know every note of a piece and when it was written, it took time for me to realize that you don’t need all this information. But I still have a lot of books out in front of me on any given day.”

Perfection about doing something in one form or another is an ideal in most people’s lives. But for a time achievable perfection turned out to be Davis’ worst enemy.

“I was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia,” she says. “My father left when I was 7 or 9, I’m not sure. I have two older sisters. We were very poor, but my mother worked hard, holding down three jobs at a time to keep us going. Growing up, I had ballet classes, chess classes, (Amateur Athletic Union) swim team, always one kind of activity or another. But never parties or friends’ houses.”

There was also music. At age 4, she began studies with Charles Engel at the Settlement Music School and by her teens had already compiled an impressive musical dossier: One of 10 finalists in Leonard Bernstein’s Young Peoples Auditions; performing with the Philadelphia Orchestra at 12; a Van Cliburn Scholarship student at the Interlochen Arts Academy (one of numerous scholarships and grants) and then, at 13, transferring to the North Carolina School of the Arts.

At 18, she won a Juilliard Scholarship, and after finishing her undergraduate studies, joined the faculty as an instructor in theory and ear training. Her concertizing career seemed assured.

Then, “I sensed something was wrong. I didn’t know what it was. At Juilliard, you’d see people win international competitions, then come back from great tours looking defeated, fizzled out. I’d done wonderful things in music, but I did not know who I was. I realized that being a pianist had nothing to do with me, with the care and nurturing of Rebecca. I need maturing in many areas of my life. I did not have a healthy outlook.”

Davis quit music cold, and left New York with several hundred dollars in her pocket to work her way west, taking secretarial jobs or substitute-teaching. “People said I was crazy to throw it all away. But so be it. Music is great; art is great. But it’s only a manifestation of who you are. I had never faced my fears and insecurities before. I was naive. I knew I needed to grow spiritually. It couldn’t be ‘Rebecca the pianist,’ but ‘Rebecca who plays the piano.’ I could sense the difference, but I couldn’t articulate it.”

In Los Angeles, a failed romance didn’t help her fragile self-esteem. “I was a co-dependent, though I hate that word. But you can’t put responsibility for yourself on other people. I was just surviving, just making enough to pay the bills and keep a roof over my head.” But slowly she began to find her way in the quotidian world, and one day had an old $150 upright piano delivered to her apartment, “just to see if I could go back.” She hadn’t touched a keyboard in seven years.

Soon she was back to three hours of daily practice, and the slow resumption of study and concertizing. (She’s been successfully married to an audio engineer and composer since 1988.) Shortly after the Los Angeles riots took place, she was searching for some way to help the inner-city community that wouldn’t deplete her money and time and decided to play at a mission for the homeless.

“I walked into the auditorium to face men who were in off the street for their noon meal. Not a classical music audience. ‘I’m auditioning,’ I told them, and then played Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude. They loved it, and I rediscovered the power of music to move people anywhere. That concert gave me more joy than Carnegie Hall.”

So far, Davis has weathered the protests of classical purists, particularly over her playing of jazz (“It’s a touchy subject, but there’s a lot of music out there that deserves to be heard. We have to broaden our cultural base”). And although she could probably look forward to a lengthy career in the paradoxically intimate and public life that radio confers, KUSC may not have her for long. Not only is her concert career picking up, but so is her concern for the disaffected young.

“I grew up in the hippie era, when you believed in love and joy and peace. But I think if I’d grown up in today’s world, without family support, I could be a gangbanger myself. It’s a terrible thing to say. But it’s across the board. You see young people in Russia rebelling. And in England. Not just here. Young people are tired and angry. We’re destroying the world before they get a chance to enjoy it.

“If all you know is the environment you’ve grown up in, you’re bound to have preconceived notions about the way things are. That’s why I’ll probably give up ‘Commuter Classics’ and teach in the schools, where music programs have been canceled. I listen to the music. Heavy metal. Rap. Those are cries of the abandoned. If you leave people to feel worthless, that’s why they get angry. If everybody did a little bit, even if it’s to say ‘thank you’ in a supermarket, it’d help. People need to feel important, to know they’re valued.”

Certainly that’s a lesson Davis made great sacrifice to learn.