Live Stream: Deeper Lecture: John Schaefer

Music on the Radio – A Missed Opportunity

On the surface, radio seems like the ultimate blind screen test: you hear music without seeing the musicians, so in theory, you respond just to the quality of the music, not the identity of the performers. And yet, radio has become a deeply segregated medium for music (although there are some surprising exceptions). The story of music and radio is a story of an opportunity that, so far, has largely been missed: music is a powerful example of our commonality, but it is too often tangled up with coded language and issues of access and representation – or the lack thereof.

Purchase tickets to the in person event here.

ABOUT JOHN SCHAEFER

John Schaefer is the host and producer of WNYC’s long-running new music show New Sounds (“The #1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard), founded in 1982, and its innovative Soundcheck podcast, which has featured live performances and interviews with a variety of guests since 2002. He created the New Sounds Live concert series in1986, which features new works, commissioned pieces, and a special series devoted to live music for silent films. Done largely at Brookfield Place and Merkin Concert Hall in New York, the series continues to this day.

The Deeper Lecture Series is a talk + Q&A program on Zoom designed to acquaint Gibney’s community of artists and audiences with the most provocative, influential and inspiring minds at work in the arts, humanities and activism.

Image Description: John Schaefer watches as the late New Orleans pianist/songwriter Allen Toussaint plays live in the WNYC studio.

Photo by Irene Trudel.