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Mountain Stage at 30: A Radio Retrospective

For 30 years and with over 800 episodes, Mountain Stage has been a mainstay in public radio and American music.

Like anything that evolves into a lasting endeavor, Mountain Stage’s success is part happenstance mixed with years of dedication and hard work. Truly, though, it all comes down to the people who made the show possible coming together with a shared vision.

In this hour-long radio special, you’ll hear how the show came to be, its rise to a national program, and examine what it is that makes Mountain Stage mean so much to the artists who have performed on the show and the audience it reaches.

Icy Music

Percussionists- let’s tip our hats to them.

Drummers, per se, have been the butt of many a joke over the years, but the percussionist, a slightly more subtle animal, has to be given kudos. They have been a major force in moving music forward since the early part of the 20th century.

SIDEBAR: A drummer, in the most confined definition, is someone who plays a kit, a drum set. A percussionist, by my own definition, is someone who plays a wide variety of percussion instruments. That's the distinction for me. No emails, thanks.

You see, no matter how beautiful and convincing a musical construct is, say baroque music, there always lies ahead an era which contains rebellion against or a deconstruction of that style. Each successive musical era turns its back on the previous, in other words.

Once tonality had been stretched by Ravel and then further by Wagner, and then eventually broken by Schoenberg, what was there left to do? As John Cage said in his magnificently prophetic book, Silence, composers were going to move away from keyboard-based composing and towards percussion. Rhythm was now going to be front and center and indeed it has been.

Here we are, almost 14 years into the new millennium and music is alive and well. Watch these young percussionists make music with lake ice.

Or this piece by Steve Reich which uses repetition as a propulsion forward, as harmonic stasis, and as a way for canonic (echoing) melodies to float above. Brilliant!

How about John Cage’s use of natural objects to create an aquatic sound world?

Special New Year's Programming for Radio Fans

Mark your calendars for these special programs from West Virginia Public Radio. We’ll help you celebrate the year than was and ring in the new one.

Let us know what you think about these shows! Go to our Facebook page, tweet us or e-mail feedback@wvpublic.org.

New Year’s Eve

9 a.m. — Inside Appalachia Year in Review

10 a.m. — Former Governors Caperton and Wise on the Future of Education

11 a.m. — West Virginia @ 150: a radio documentary on our sesquicentennial that explores the state’s rich cultural diversity and how the state’s history and other characteristics shaped today’s West Virginians.

Noon — Inspiring West Virginians: profiles of West Virginians from humble beginnings who contribute nationally to science, technology, engineering, math, and business.

1 p.m. — The Vietnam Veterans Memorial from Studio 360: a beautiful and moving story about how the memorial came to be, and why it means so much to so many.

2 p.m. — Capitol Steps: Politics Takes a Holiday New Year’s Edition 2013 — Help roast 2013 to a crisp with the Capitol Steps and their annual year-in-review awards ceremony. It’s all in this hour-long special, “Politics Takes a Holiday!” It’s been a great year for job creation…although of course many of the jobs created were for comedians!

3 p.m. — Mountain Stage at 30: A Radio Retrospective — In this hour-long radio special, you’ll hear how the show came to be, its rise to a national program, and examine what it is that makes Mountain Stage mean so much to the artists who have performed on the show and the audience it reaches.

4 p.m. — Mountain Stage’s 800th Show: performances by folk-singer Ani DiFranco, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member Dave Mason, California rockers Dawes and the high-energy, horn-driven Brooklyn group Red Baraat.

6 p.m. — Sidetracks: West Virginia’s 150th Birthday in music

8 p.m. — The Long Game: The Battle for the Direction of the Classroom. This new radio documentary from Trey Kay (producer of “The Great Textbook War”) delves into the culture war battles over public school curriculum content in Texas.

9 p.m. — Capitol Steps: Politics Takes a Holiday New Year’s Edition 2013

New Year’s Day

5 a.m. — The Moth Radio Hour

6 a.m. — State of the ReUnion: Hospitals

7 a.m. — Burn: The Energy Journal, Rising Seas

8 a.m. — The Unconventionals

9 a.m. — Song Travel with Michael Feinstien and Friends

10 a.m. — Woodsongs Radio

11 a.m. — History of Classical Music

Noon — New Year’s Day from Vienna 2014 — Direct from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, it’s the most popular classical music concert in the world! This year, Franz Welser-Möst leads the annual celebration concert by the Vienna Philharmonic, featuring the waltzes, marches, gallops of the Strauss family and much more. Laura Carlo hosts.

2 p.m. — Dream Farm Cafe

3 p.m. — On Point

4 p.m. — Diane Rehm

5 p.m. — Value This

6 p.m. — Big Picture Science

7 p.m. — Travel with Rick Steves

8 p.m. — America’s Test Kitchen

9 p.m. — From the Top

Listen to Brett Dennen, Joy Kills Sorrow & More on Mountain Stage

We hope you can listen to this week's all new episode of Mountain Stage, with singer-songwriter Brett Dennen, Joy Kills Sorrow, The James Hunter Six, The…

We hope you can listen to this week’s all new episode of Mountain Stage, with singer-songwriter Brett Dennen, Joy Kills Sorrow, The James Hunter Six, The Bobs and Dominique Pruitt. Tune in this Sunday at 2 pm on West Virginia Public Radio, or on one of over 130 stations across America.

Shedding Light Into the Dark

When we are first exposed to educational topics that excite and stimulate our minds, the manner with which the information is delivered becomes the…

When we are first exposed to educational topics that excite and stimulate our minds, the manner with which the information is delivered becomes the template for future learning.

What do I mean? My preference is British.

But, more than British, it must have a glorious British narrator who has gravitas-a certain weight and authority to their delivery and personality. For example, James Galway’s marvelous music history series, Music in Time, had the sparkling Irish charm, but the narrator was a British historian whose voice spoke of deep authority. That’s my quirk and I have to live with it.

Host Waldemar Januszczak’s down-to-earth, almost satiric style takes a bit of an adjustment. From the pointed hair to the use of contemporary slang, Januszczak (a Brit by way of Poland) can come off as trying too hard to reach a younger audience. For example, describing the barbarians’ jewelry as “bling.”

Still, this is a wonderful exploration of an age that has a terrible moniker that implies it was an age of ignorance. I recall trying to research this era’s art and being told by a librarian that there were “many books on Renaissance art.” This is a real attitude embraced by even the most educated among us. Truly sad.

The so-called Dark Ages is a lively age of art that speaks of a vitality, an exquisite artistic capability and has a way of getting communicating its mystic message across the ages.

Delightful bits that we learn:

the rotas square
the secret signs of Christianity
the sources of the many images of Christ
the humble beginnings of the Christian church
barbarian is a misleading term and their culture/art is exquisite

Your light-hearted host, Waldemar Januszczak, dispelling that stupid Viking myth.

We learn that the horned Viking helmet was a 19th century opera costume invention and had nothing to do with the real Vikings.

This set had two discs and has four episodes. I liked them all, although I did not really care about episode three which presented Islamic architecture (although the intricate decorations are incredible).

Overall, we learn quite a bit about this mysterious age and the host is very engaging.

Buy it at Amazon.

Nesting

When my elderly parents moved to a retirement community in West Virginia, at my request, it was a tough transition. To lifelong flatlanders, my cherished…

When my elderly parents moved to a retirement community in West Virginia, at my request, it was a tough transition. To lifelong flatlanders, my cherished mountains seemed oppressive, not protective. The roads were narrower and much twistier than those in Michigan. Their tiny new apartment was a poor substitute for the comfortable home where they’d lived for more than sixty years. And, even though they’d grown too frail to do much gardening, the hanging flower basket on their new balcony was nothing like a whole yard with trees, flowers, squirrels, and birds. For a while, we were all miserable.

Then the doves moved in. One day, when Dad went out to water the flowers in the hanging basket, a bird was sitting right in the middle of the bouquet. A few days later, in a nest that was little more than a few twigs, two eggs appeared.

The doves became our shared obsession. We Googled to learn how long it would take for the eggs to hatch. Mom and Dad spent time every day watching and visiting the doves, a dutiful twosome who traded egg-sitting time. Soon Dad could water the plant without disturbing whatever parent happened to be warming the eggs. When they hatched, we were privy to the feeding of the babies, their rapid growth, and their fledging.

“One of them is gone,” my mother announced one day. By the next day, both had flown.

And something else had changed. The little apartment hasn’t gotten any bigger, and the roads are still twisty and confusing. The mountains will never be their preferred landscape, but Mom and Dad seem to have nested. Perhaps they’ve taken a tip from the doves: Home is where you make it. In a flowerpot or a house—for a lifetime or for a few weeks—home is where you go about the business of being a family. And I have come to understand, with increasing gratitude, that Mom and Dad are here in West Virginia to offer me the privilege of being with my family in these late years of their lives.

How perfect that a dove should give me the message. With its mournful voice and peaceful symbolism. With its message of hope, like the dove who brought an olive branch to Noah after the Great Flood.

Can sorrow and peace and hope live in the same heart? I know they can. A little bird told me.