With millions of songs available at our fingertips, there's something special about having a familiar voice introduce us to a piece of music, share its story, and help us hear it in a new way.
That's what our AZPM radio hosts do every day. They bring their knowledge and passion to the airwaves, creating a personal connection that no playlist or algorithm can replace.
On October 28, we're celebrating Public Radio Music Day and this year's theme, Sounds Like Home, by asking the people behind Classical 90.5 and AZPM Jazz 89.1 HD-2 to share some of the music that means the most to them.
What’s your all-time favorite piece of classical music?
JAMES REEL: I think my all-time favorite has to be Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8. Now, No. 9 is the New World Symphony; that’s the one that’s really popular. But I like No. 8 because it has a more consistent sense of joy, a sense of nature. There’s a big storm in the middle of the first movement, but everything clears off, and it’s just a delight.
What’s one piece you think everyone should hear at least once?
JAMES: One thing everybody should be able to hear at least once, as trite as it sounds, is Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for organ. That’s because it’s been used dozens, if not hundreds, of times in movies and commercials, so it’s something you’ll recognize. And it sounds kind of Halloween-ish because it’s organ and it’s in a minor key, but it also is a fairly painless way of introducing you to the way a fugue works and how the lines intertwine and overlap and develop into something new. So there’s entertainment value in it, but it’s a painless educational experience.
What’s your guilty pleasure when you’re NOT listening to classical music?
JAMES: I will reluctantly admit to listening to Leonard Cohen’s greatest hits from time to time. So depressing.
What’s your favorite thing about sharing classical music with Southern Arizona?
JAMES: I get to entertain people with things that they already know they like, but I also get to introduce them to things that they don’t know and, I hope, will like. And if they don’t like a certain piece, at least now they know why.
What's your classical music “hot take?”
JAMES: My classical music hot take is that Anton Bruckner’s friends were right: his symphonies did need to be cut, edited, and reworked because… they’re just too much.
What’s your all-time favorite piece of classical music?
ANDY BADE: Well, I don’t have an all-time favorite piece of music; there are just too many GREAT pieces of music, from Renaissance to Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20th century, and beyond. There are just so many great pieces! But one piece that I’ll mention that I find really compelling, that I really do love, and that might not come up on everybody’s list, is Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. It is a piece of music that is deeply personal for the composer and deeply emotional. And that’s something we don’t often expect in the music of J.S. Bach, because it’s so often filled with a lot of running sixteenth notes that can sound very academic and mechanical. Sometimes they’re even called motor rhythms, and that’s because I don’t think they’re played well that often.
We don’t often think of J.S. Bach’s music as having the same depth of emotion and pathos as maybe the Romantic music of the 19th century. But I find the St. Matthew Passion, because it’s such a passionate story, such an emotional, deep story that Bach, as a very devout person, had this connection with, and everybody in his audience, of course, in the church would too, that he brings out so much emotion there, equal to anything in the 19th century. Even though it’s Baroque, the height of the Baroque, there’s this depth of emotion and pathos that cannot be matched anywhere else, any better. That’s a piece of music that I think everybody ought to experience somehow.
What’s your favorite thing about sharing classical music with Southern Arizona?
ANDY: Well, I just think that classical music has stayed around as long as it has because it connects with people. It connects with us, something within us. And it can be the range of everything, because with 500 years of music, or more, every emotion, every experience is expressed in music somewhere or another. I think that it just has that deep connection with us when we really listen, engage with the music, whether it’s just as a listener, but even MORE if you can have the opportunity to be one of the performers: in the choir, in the orchestra, in the band, playing by yourself, whatever. It just has a connection that a lot of pop music that comes and goes just doesn’t have.
What’s your classical music “hot take”?
ANDY: We’ll go with another piece of music that I think is just underrated. It’s not often performed, but it’s just an incredible masterpiece of music. And that’s Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. It’s a symphony by HIS definition, not by, really, anyone else’s. It’s sacred music because it’s the setting of three different psalms. Two of them are penitential, “Oh God, remember me as I’m dying” kind of psalms, and Psalm 150, which is this glorious expression of praise. And yet it’s set in a way that ONLY Stravinsky could have done it.
Stravinsky left his Orthodox faith when he was young and then, many years later, came back to it. And when you come back to something like that in later years, it’s always different. Your relationship to it is always something different.
And Stravinsky didn’t like sentimentality. He didn’t like sentimentalism. And so when he came to this music, he didn’t want it to be sentimental. So he started composing with Church Slavonic, which is the Russian church language, but then he switched to Latin. It was a completely dead language, and it didn’t have some of the same sentimental kinds of attachments that a known language, a used language, might have. So, he composed it in Latin.
And then it’s for orchestra with chorus, no solos, and strangely enough, he wrote it for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and he didn’t write any violins! Lower strings, winds, percussion, two pianos, NO violins! But it has a darker sound that way.
And with his very percussive, rhythmic content, it doesn’t sound like a psalm. It just sounds like, “What is it?” It’s so different.
And it doesn’t have any sentimental value at all, it seems, and yet it is white-hot with intensity! It’s cold on the one hand and white-hot intensity on the other hand. And it’s just an amazing piece of music. I’ve had the opportunity to sing in the chorus at least two or three times, and it’s just a unique experience that I wish everybody could have. And I wish everybody could at least listen to it once. I just find it so compelling, and many people have never heard of it!
What’s your all-time favorite piece of classical or jazz music?
JASON SCHREIBER: Hard to pick an all-time favorite. Some things that I gravitate toward are the Impressionists, French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy, like The Girl with the Flaxen Hair. Part of what I like about those pieces is that they’re originally written for piano, so it’s something that I can play at home just whenever I’m bored, and that kind of accessibility is nice to me, besides listening to it. Sometimes I prefer to listen to orchestrated versions of Debussy’s music, like Clair de lune.
What’s one piece you think everyone should hear at least once?
JASON: It’s not one piece, per se, but what I encourage our listeners to try to do, with our 21st-century musical ears, is recognize that we have access to so much music just at our fingertips. So something I’ve been appreciating much more now, especially from working here at Classical 90.5, is just hearing how similar music can sound spanning 400 years, oftentimes skipping over some of the more classically rigid elements in Classical and Romantic music.
There’s a composer from the Renaissance period named Thomas Tallis, and a lot of his music is very modal. So modal music is interesting because it’s not necessarily rigid in major or minor. So it can sound kind of new, or old, or somewhere in between.
He has a piece that he wrote in 1567 called Why Fum’th in Fight, which literally translates to “Why are we fighting?” Specifically speaking to kings at the time, like, “What are we fighting over? What’s with all the conflict?”
This is a piece from more than 400 years ago that was picked up in 1910 by an early 20th-century composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams. Which was shortly before World War I, so again, there’s more conflict.
Even after 400 years, we’re still asking the same questions.
And the interesting thing about that piece of music is that it really sounds like it’s asking that question without any text. There was text originally, but the new fantasia that Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote in 1910, even without text, it’s just beckoning that question. “Why are we doing this? Why do we have this conflict?”
What’s your guilty pleasure when you’re NOT listening to classical music?
JASON: I guess a guilty pleasure, as guilty as guilt is, would be listening to a group called Angine de Poitrine.
There’s kind of a new thing that swept the internet back in late spring with this group, and it’s two guys that are dressed in these costumes and they play microtonal music.
The guitar player has a double-necked bass and guitar, with a custom-built guitar that has frets in the quarter steps, so that’s what they can achieve.
What’s your favorite thing about sharing classical music with Southern Arizona?
JASON: One of the things I like sharing, similar to Johnny’s experience, his expertise is geographical proximity. I guess a lot of my expertise comes from playing a lot of world music, a lot of nontraditional types of music.
So when we do play something, and sometimes we do play nontraditional music, I feel like that’s one of my fortes that I can talk about.
So it’s nice to have, and all of us, too, on KUAT, everyone has strengths, and so everyone brings something completely unique to the table.
I like to bring any kind of expertise I have for nontraditional, non-Western music.
What’s your classical music “hot take”?
JASON: One hot take that I like about Classical 90.5 is that we’re one of the very few places left in the country that have fully curated shifts where we have people telling you about the music.
Any one of us has millions of songs at our fingertips at any time, BUT it’s nice to have a guide to tell us, “This is why we’re listening to this piece of music. This is how it’s relevant, or may be relevant, in your life.”
Rather than just going either blind or using AI, or whatever. Just having a guide.
I like to be someone’s guide.
Is that a hot take?
What’s your all-time favorite piece of classical or jazz music?
JONNY BYRNE: If I was to pick one that I’ve enjoyed since joining Classical 90.5…we have a wonderful classical music director in James Reel, who has a varied music schedule across the entire week. So every day I’m learning about new works and new composers. One I learned about was English composer Graham Fitkin, who has an album called Piano Circus, and a work from that is Log, which is about a 16-minute piece with six sort of dueling pianos at one time. And it’s got a very, almost traditional Irish music cadence to it. It sounds, at times, a bit murder-mystery. It’s a bit reminiscent of Tubular Bells, the theme from The Exorcist, at times as well. And that is one work I’ve enjoyed especially over the last couple of weeks.
What’s one piece you think everyone should hear at least once?
JONNY: A piece of music I heard for the first time since joining Classical 90.5 was Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofé, which I think is quite important, given we’re living in Arizona.
And while looking into the context, it’s a wonderful piece of music and was released, I think, in the 1940s or 1950s as a Walt Disney film, which has no narration, no speaking. It’s just shots of the Grand Canyon and Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite in the background.
I think that’s a nice homage to classical music and our local roots in Arizona.
What’s your guilty pleasure when you’re NOT listening to classical music?
JONNY: I’m not a big fan of pop music, commercial music. I don’t judge anyone that is, but if I was to tap into something that might be a little bit of a guilty pleasure, it would be 1990s European trance music.
I have a playlist on Spotify called “European Elliptical,” which you can search if you’d like to!
It’s sort of a soundtrack of gyms and leisure centers where they have trance music and dance music playing in the background, and you can just imagine being on an elliptical and motivating yourself.
So that’s probably my guilty pleasure.
What’s your favorite thing about sharing classical music with Southern Arizona?
JONNY: My favorite thing about sharing classical music with Southern Arizona is, well, being biased, being from Europe, Ireland in particular, it’s sharing the wealth of European-based composers and the fact that the origins of classical music come from European countries that I have been lucky enough to visit.
I can reference, you know, Prague, Salzburg, Vienna, countries like Germany, Hungary. Even from time to time, we have Irish composers, composers from the UK.
So that’s one aspect that I enjoy sharing, the geographical background of the composers that we play on Classical 90.5.
What’s your classical music “hot take”?
JONNY: My classical music hot take is that when we play certain works from certain composers, it’s often the case that those pieces of music which are synonymous with classical music and household names were not popular at the time.
A lot of them were not very well received. There were very harsh critics at the time.
So it could be works from Mozart, or Beethoven, or Stravinsky, and they went through a lot of turmoil, whether it was personal, or from critics, or they weren’t very popular at the time, or some of their music wasn’t.
So I feel like maybe in 50 or 60 years’ time, decades, centuries, some of the music we listen to now that people might not consider popular WILL be popular in decades and centuries to come.
Because if classical music is anything to go by, a lot of them weren’t popular at the time, and now they’re some of the most popular composers and produced some of the most popular pieces of music.
What’s your all-time favorite piece of classical or jazz music?
MICHAEL DAUPHINAIS: It’s hard to pick just one, especially as a musician. But I think my “desert island” piece of classical music is Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. I’ve been in love with it since college. It takes you everywhere from the greatest heights to super-intimate depths of thought and emotion, and everything in between. It’s one of my all-time favorite pieces, for sure.
What’s one piece you think everyone should hear at least once?
MICHAEL: Well, it’s not a light piece, but I do think that one piece everybody should hear at least once is Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. It was composed in incredibly difficult circumstances by Messiaen, who was a prisoner of war, and composed for other fellow prisoner-of-war musicians to perform in front of a prisoner-of-war audience under bleak circumstances, including a cello that had just three strings that night. But I think that that’s a profound piece of music that everybody should experience at least once.
What’s your guilty pleasure when you’re NOT listening to classical music?
MICHAEL: I don’t like to feel guilty about my pleasures, especially musical ones, but every once in a while I have to “dad” out and listen to some Steely Dan. Right? What’s not to love?
What makes classical music on public radio special to you?
MICHAEL: I first discovered, or was introduced to, Detroit’s classical music station when I was growing up, which was a commercial station, but it was classical music on the radio 24 hours a day. And I started keeping a journal of everything they played, especially if it was something that stuck out to me. That way I could explore further, maybe go to the library and get another recording of it and listen to it again. Classical music on the radio, in particular, just has a soft spot for me, going back to really expanding my knowledge of the repertoire and the art.
What’s your classical music “hot take”?
MICHAEL: I’ve got two!
One, I think Anton Bruckner is really overrated. And I say that knowing that I’m not a brass player, so sorry to John Hildebrand and every other brass player friend I have out there who loves Bruckner, but this pianist just doesn’t get into it. I’ve listened to almost everything he’s written, and I can’t hum you a single tune from any of it! So Bruckner? Not my jam, so much.
Two, somebody who I think is underrated and deserves more attention is a pianist named Bruce Brubaker, who has quite a discography of contemporary piano music, and he’s still recording and concertizing. I believe he teaches at the New England Conservatory. That man’s an absolutely fearless beast at the piano. He can do anything, and he’s one of the people I’m listening to a lot these days.
This year’s theme for Public Radio Music Day is “Sounds Like Home.” What is a classical or jazz piece that “sounds like home” to you?
MICHAEL: I’ll give you a jazz album that always reminds me of home because it reminds me of the holidays: the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas. There’s just something about it that’s familiar to a lot of us, especially of a certain generation, or generations. It makes me think of the holidays, and the holidays make me think of home.
What’s your all-time favorite piece of classical music?
NICOLE COX: This was an interesting question. When I was first asked, I found it very challenging to answer because I find myself being drawn to the stories behind the music.
I’ll go to a story that I feel like I’ve been drawn to since I first started working here, which is the story of the Boulanger sisters: Lili and Nadia Boulanger.
Gabriel Fauré, who was also a family friend of the Boulanger family, noticed that when Lili was just two years old, she had perfect pitch, and she appeared destined to become a talented composer. But she was also plagued with chronic illness and sadly passed away at the age of 24.
Her sister, Nadia, was also a composer, and she conducted as well. It was after her sister’s death that she decided to dedicate her life to teaching, and she went on to become a famed teacher, including for Aaron Copland, Astor Piazzolla, Philip Glass, Quincy Jones…and the list goes on.
And I love the connection between this family…the sisters, the father. Some of the pieces Lili Boulanger composed had a sense of melancholy or longing that were connected to her father’s death when she was young, just six or seven years old.
So when I think of the connection of this family, the journey of both sisters, and how many lives they touched, because they had a profound impact on 20th-century music, I would say my answer is Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne et Cortège.
Nocturne is a very dreamy piece that Lili wrote in just two days in 1911, and Cortège is very joyous and energetic. She wrote that in 1914 after recovering from an illness.
So it’s the journey, the hope, and the connection that draws me continuously to the stories of these two sisters.
What is a classical or jazz piece that “sounds like home” to you?
ANDREA KENNEDY: Our Town Suite by Aaron Copland. First, he wrote the score for the film Our Town, which was based on a play, and then later he shortened the music down to a suite.
It’s a very lovely depiction of the fictional town of Grover’s Corners. At the beginning, the way the music plays, it sounds like the town is breathing. It’s like the land is breathing as everything wakes up at sunrise.
It reminds me of my own small town, which was smallish, suburban. We owned the grocery store there, and we lived in the back. Everyone knew who we were… and we couldn’t get away with a thing!