Friday, May 18, 2012

So What: Local News, Notes & Links

Here's the latest wrap-up of assorted links and short local news items of interest:

* On June 12, postal services in the United States and France will issue stamps honoring Miles Davis and French singer Édith Piaf. Designed by Greg Breeding, the stamps (pictured) use a photo of Davis with his trumpet in 1970 by David Gahr and a photo of Piaf from the Michael Ochs Archives. The 45-cent stamps will will be available for purchase nationwide.

* Bassist Willem von Hombracht today reported on Facebook that the Sunday jazz jam session at Johnny Gitto's restaurant that he's been co-hosting since the beginning of March has been discontinued.

* The St. Louis-based HD radio station Smooth 96.3 HD-3 has changed its name to Hip 96.3 HD-3, and has modified its playlist "to have the freedom to add some stuff that will totally fit, but might not be entirely Jazz." The station has set up a new Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/Hip963.

* The Regional Arts Commission this week announced that they'll award nearly $2.9 million in grants (.pdf file) to St. Louis area arts organizations for 2012-13. That's a 6.7% increase percent over last year's total.

The money is collected from a hotel sales tax in St. Louis and St. Louis County, and will go to fund 186 not-for-profit dance, theater, music and literary organizations in the area. Local presenters of jazz and creative music that received grants for next year include the Sheldon Arts Foundation ($61,523), Jazz St. Louis ($19,656), New Music Circle ($9,000) and the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center ($1,030).

For some perspective, consider that the two largest grants for 2012-13 went to the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra ($533,353) and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis ($182,868). The amount received by these two organizations represents about 25% of the total of $2,863,111 that was allocated by RAC for this granting period.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is great news on the RAC grants! Thanks for the info.
Also, thanks for the post on NMC's upcoming season. It's going to be another good one.
Fred

Jason Church said...

Hello, all!

I just wanted to clarify that although we are going to tweak the format a bit, the biggest change at Hip 96.3 HD-3 is the new name.

I've come to realize that the best way to program a station like this one, is to program based on mood and not necessarily on a set of rules in a certain format.

Not to worry, though! We're sticking close to our roots and we're NOT going to start adding in stuff like other Smooth Jazz stations do (ie: Phil Collins, Annie Lennox and Anita Baker every other song). Nothing wrong with those musicians, but they don't fit the mood of Hip 96.3 HD-3.

Thanks for the shout out, Dean! And I'd love to hear what everyone thinks!

-Jason Church
Music Director
Hip 96.3 HD-3

Dean Minderman said...

Thanks for the clarification, Jason.
Jazz is a "big-tent" music, and there's certainly room for lots of different approaches to programming.

Anonymous said...

When will you guys be streaming over the internet?