WGBH Radio
Launches Online Listening
Resource for American
Music
by Matthew Packwood
For the
past ten years WGBH Radio Boston’s distribution service, Art of the States,
has sent monthly collections of contemporary American music recordings
to broadcasters in over 50 countries. Focusing on a wide range of art music
composed and performed in the United States, the service has provided a
unique picture of American musical life to audiences in Canada, Europe,
Africa, Asia, Australia, and Latin America.
Now, Art
of the States has launched a new website to complement its radio service.
Located at artofthestates.org,
the site presents complete pieces in high-quality streaming audio to Internet
users anywhere, anytime. “While a lot of music websites offer musical samples
or information, our site is meant for the serious listener,” notes Art
of the States producer Joel Gordon. “Everything about the site is designed
to get listeners right to the music quickly and easily.” The site is clean,
simple, and easy to navigate, with a user-friendly search function that
allows visitors to explore the repertoire by composer, performer, instrumentation,
decade, genre, or keyword.
Artofthestates.org
was created particularly as a resource for teachers, students, performers,
and composers of contemporary music. Drawn from the American repertoire
distributed on the Art of the States radio service, the site’s collection
runs a stylistic gamut from orchestral music, chamber music, and songs
to electronic, jazz/rock-influenced, and experimental pieces. Many of these
works are unavailable on commercial recordings, and can only be found on
artofthestates.org. Teachers can now complement the often limited collections
of their libraries with the diversity of pieces available on the site.
Each piece is supported by a range of materials including program notes,
biographies of the composers and performers, and links to a variety of
related websites.
Disseminating
lesser-known American works and performances is one of the central missions
of Art of the States; this new website broadens that mission by making
this music available to any listener with an internet connection.
Access
to artofthestates.org and all of its music is provided free of charge.
The project is supported by The Island Fund, National Endowment for the
Arts, and WGBH.
Matthew Packwood is associate
producer of Art of the States at WGBH,
Boston.
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