Sometimes the Good Guys Win

John Schaefer and Laurie Anderson, 2005. Irene Trudel, Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.

They changed their minds. A week ago, WNYC announced it was terminating its familiar "New Sounds" program with John Schaefer. On Monday, Goli Sheikholeslami, the new president and CEO of New York Public Radio, announced that "New Sounds" and Schaefer and the long-time producer, Caryn Havlik, will be remaining.
In a gracious statement,  Sheikholeslami said, "A show like New Sounds can only be produced by public radio, and specifically at NYPR." She recently resigned from her arts job in Chicago to take the leadership of New York Public Radio.
Sheikholeslami's full statement on line can be read here:

https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/reversal-wnyc-says-new-sounds-will-stay-airwaves

The moral to the story is that sometimes new executives need to be reminded just what it is they are leading. Protesting is good, particularly in something as subjective as the arts. Donating (or not donating) also works. I am so happy for John Schaefer -- and for the eclectic audience of WNYC in the city that never sleeps. 

Here is my original article last week: 
I can’t remember where I was, but I definitely had the radio on, late one evening, listening to John Schaefer’s show, “New Sounds.”

You never know what you will get. Schaefer seemed to find music from cultures all over the world, and within the United States – odd instruments, string and reed and percussion, plus the human voice at all pitches, and he would bubble about them, with junior-high-school enthusiasm.

This night – he works best late in the evening – Schaefer introduced a trio performing the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim but with unique arrangements, a blend of classic and bossa nova, familiar songs, carefully crafted.  

The album was “Casa,” performed by Ryuichi Sakamoto with his incisive, spare piano, and Jacques Morelenbaum, with his lush, sweeping cello, and vocalist Paula Morelenbaum, with her haunting Portuguese and charming almost lisping English. The songs were standards, from the basic Jobim playbook, but the interpretations were unique.

I think Schaefer informed us that the album was recorded on the piano of the late Tom Jobim – in Jobim’s lakeside house in Rio. From what I read, Sakamoto felt awe at his pilgrimage to the home of the master, and had to ease into touching the piano.

I was hooked, went out and bought the CD, which has become the most-played album on my iPod.

A classic. That’s what John Schaefer does. He finds new releases, some of them flirting with commercial, some of them delightfully obscure, destined for one-time hearing, but in the memory bank, somewhere. 

A show like this would seem to have institutional permanence, particularly in polyglot multicultural New York. In fact, “New Sounds” lasted from 1982 until this week, when the new hatchet at WNYC announced that “New Sounds” is about to be disappeared. For what reason? They have a better replacement?

“Why would they do that?” Laurie Anderson asked Michael Cooper in the Times on Monday.

In the city that never sleeps, shouldn’t there remain a place for music you never heard before? Something that opens your mind and your ears?

“New Sounds?”  What does the “NY” in WNYC stand for?

Thank you, John Schaefer, for the many years of “New Sounds” and please let your fans know about the next gig.
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Bad news on the doorstep:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/arts/music/wnyc-new-sounds-schaefer.html?searchResultPosition=1

A review of "Casa" when it was new:   
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-aug-30-et-jazz30-story.html

Ryuichi Sakamoto, Paula Morelenbaum, Jacques Morelenbaum. "Casa."