Listen to Our Band and Visit L.A. Too!

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, known for sometimes pushing the boundaries in its music choices, is bucking another trend among its orchestral brethren--while others are retreating from the airwaves, Esa-Pekka Salonen and company are reaching out to audiences beyond the concert hall.

And along with the Schoenberg comes a little salesmanship in the form of a new series of radio broadcasts that also feature interview segments touting Los Angeles as a cultural destination.

Starting this week, and continuing for the next 12, the Philharmonic is airing concerts on KUSC-FM (91.5) and more than 130 stations nationwide. The concerts were drawn from the 2000-2001 season, but during intermissions, the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau--the program’s sponsor--will drop in a short feature highlighting some aspect of L.A. culture. “It communicates to people in the rest of the country that Los Angeles is a major cultural center,” said Brenda Barnes, president and general manager of KUSC radio.

The radio series, which can be heard locally at noon Sundays, marks the Philharmonic’s return to the airwaves after a three-year absence at a time when orchestras and opera companies are disappearing from their local radio stations, much less those across the United States.

“That was once the rule. Now it’s the exception. What Los Angeles is doing here is really significant,” said Jack McAuliffe, vice president of the American Symphony Orchestra League, the professional association that represents 1,800 groups nationwide ranging from the largest metropolitan philharmonics down to the tiniest youth orchestras. “There are a small group of orchestras where their community is worldwide and the Philharmonic is among them.”

In the 1999-2000 survey of its members, the most recent poll available, the Orchestra League found that of the 25 largest orchestras in the country, half broadcast at least some of their concerts.

More recently, when Amoco withdrew its sponsorship of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s broadcasts before this season, the CSO couldn’t find another sponsor and had to suspend both its nationally syndicated and local programs. Among the rest of the nation’s six largest orchestras, only San Francisco and New York join Los Angeles with regular, nationally syndicated programs. Boston and Philadelphia have local or regional radio concert series.

“Where other people are retracting, we’re in an expansion mode,” said Deborah Borda, managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “We’re looking to the future.”

The series arose out of a partnership between the Philharmonic, KUSC and the Convention & Visitors Bureau. The bureau had previously sponsored a series of broadcasts by the Philharmonic on the area’s commercial classical station, KMZT-FM (105.1), but a funding crunch ended that, Borda said.

“These things cost money to produce and to pay the musicians, and there wasn’t any money,” said Borda, who came to Los Angeles from the New York Philharmonic two years ago. “It was important to me to get the orchestra back on the air. Any great orchestra has national broadcasts.”

Distributed through a network created by Chicago classical station WFMT, the Philharmonic series will air on stations from Hawaii to New York--triple the number from when the orchestra was previously on the radio, Borda said.

Upcoming broadcasts will include not only favorites such as Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and “Firebird” Suite and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, but also works such as Scriabin’s “Poem of Ecstasy,” several pieces by Rodrigo and Leonard Bernstein’s symphonic suite from “On the Waterfront.”

The short vignettes, which will fill the eight- to 15-minute intermissions, will comprise interviews and discussions examining other L.A. cultural offerings. John Rubinstein, an actor, musician and son of pianist Arthur Rubinstein, is hosting the program and doing the intermission interviews, which will include such features as a look at Los Angeles as the new mecca for art students much like Paris and New York were in previous centuries; examine the mural as one of the city’s signature art forms; look at what is new and hot in the restaurant scene; and include official state historian Kevin Starr talking about Los Angeles’ place as an emerging world center of culture and commerce.

“Even educated and sophisticated people don’t have a sense of how rich Los Angeles is in terms of culture. Everybody in the rest of the world thinks we’re lying on the beach talking on our cell phones,” said Robert Barrett, vice president of domestic marketing for the Convention & Visitors Bureau, whose $100,000 sponsorship is paying for the program’s labor, recording and distribution costs.

“The L.A. Philharmonic is one of our most significant ambassadors,” he said, especially when it gets rave reviews on its national and international tours. “If I were to take $100,000 and try to buy advertising to drive L.A. as a destination, how far would I get? It doesn’t take a genius to realize how many people are going to hear about L.A. through this program.”

Borda hopes the broadcasts will change how people view Los Angeles as a destination. “It’s a great mixture. It’s a real look at the contemporary scene here today, how multicultural this city is,” she said. Barnes believes the broadcasts will not only raise the profile of the orchestra nationally, but will benefit local fans of the Philharmonic who live within the reach of KUSC but can’t make it to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. In addition, she said that KUSC and the other partners are committed to future series that will showcase the Philharmonic’s performances at least through the opening of the 2003 season and the debut of the landmark Walt Disney Concert Hall.

But such a commitment is becoming harder to find. With the notable exception of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, which recently opened its 62nd season on the airwaves, classical orchestras and opera companies are finding fewer sponsors to help them air programs, either locally or nationally, and fewer stations interested in playing their music.

“There are, sadly, relatively few stations in the country that make a commitment to classical music,” Barnes said.

Within the past five or so years, public radio stations around the country began moving away from music and more toward news and talk programming. Radio station consolidation, which brought with it a leap in station prices, have made commercial classical stations an endangered species.

“If you’re going to buy a station in Los Angeles for $175 million, you can’t afford to run it as a classical station,” said Barnes, noting that the audience isn’t broad enough to attract the advertising needed to pay the rent.

In addition, fewer big sponsors are funding classical programming series, weighing that prestige and corporate citizenship against the bottom line.

“They began to wonder, is this the biggest bang for their buck?” said Judith Kurnick, director of public relations for the Philadelphia Orchestra, which itself began a concert series this season on local public radio station WHYY.

A decade ago, WHYY-FM eliminated its limited menu of classical music and went all news and talk. But in November 2000 its radio and public television outlets aired the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 100th anniversary concert, and a tribute concert in September after the terrorist attacks. “We got great feedback from that,” said Arthur Ellis, WHYY communications director, which led to the current series of 26 concerts that WHYY now broadcasts on Sunday nights. The move has paid off with the station’s Sunday night audience doubling. McAuliffe said the situation in Los Angeles, with the Visitors Bureau sponsoring the Philharmonic’s program, may ensure its longevity, as the two have parallel interests.

“The inclusion of the city as a partner is, I think, a rather sophisticated and inventive approach,” he said. “It’s giving this more visibility and viability.”

*

The Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts air Sundays at noon on KUSC-FM (91.5).