Exploring Music is an internationally syndicated radio program featuring classical music, with commentary and analysis by host Bill McGlaughlin. It is a daily, one-hour show with a single in-depth theme each week. The show, which debuted in 2003, is produced by WFMT Radio Network. Exploring Music is in many ways the heir to the late Karl Haas' popular long-running show, Adventures in Good Music, expanded and updated for a 21st-century audience.
As of 2013, Exploring Music airs on 55 U.S. radio stations and has over 400,000 live listeners weekly. In Australia, Exploring Music airs on ArtSound FM in Canberra at 9AM, 3MBS at 9 AM, and on 4MBS at 7 PM. The show is also listenable worldwide via on-demand streaming of all its past and current shows.
Program description
Exploring Music delves into a wide variety of topics in classical music, and each five-program, one-week series has a single theme. Weekly themes have included weeklong studies of the music of dozens of composers, explorations of various cultures, styles, forms, and time periods, and dozens of other topics and areas of exploration.
A very small sampling of weekly topics includes such themes as:
Over two dozen classical composers — e.g. Schumann, Bartók, Grieg, Debussy, Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, and Bernstein — have also had weekly themes devoted exclusively to their lives and music. These programs are intimate biographies which include the composer's early life, education, historical and musical influences, personal life, and emotional and musical development, plus numerous musical pieces each day. Several composers, including Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Verdi, and Shostakovich, have had a two-week theme devoted to their lives and works. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven have each had several series centered around their works. Approximately one week per month is devoted to the life and works of a single composer.
Exploring Music is geared to all ages and to any level of musical knowledge. Host Bill McGlaughlin guides the listener into the music through various means: revealing the stories behind compositions, adding analysis and illustrations at the piano, exploring the interlocking nature of music and ideas, referencing the historical context of pieces and trends, and also giving his insight as a professional musician, conductor, and composer.
Each week McGlaughlin weaves a deepening narrative around the topic at hand, and aims to make exploring classical music fun. "Drawing people inside the music seems the clue to me," he says. "Human beings are wired for delight when we figure something out." Occasionally music from other genres — such as jazz, ethnic/world music, folk/traditional music, or pop standards — is aired, to liven up the discussion and illustrate points.
The piano is another tool McGlaughlin frequently employs to get concepts across. Of his original decisions about the show's format, McGlaughlin says, "It’s very hard to talk about music on the radio unless you can hear a sound, so I said I need a piano. Instead of saying 'a minor third,' I can play it. I wanted to make certain that what you could hear was prominent."
Inception and history
In 2002, Steve Robinson, Vice President of WFMT Radio Network, approached Peabody Award-winner Bill McGlaughlin to host a new daily radio show, which would showcase and explicate great works of classical music. McGlaughlin had spent 22 years as host and music director of Saint Paul Sunday, the nationally syndicated weekly chamber music performance and interview show. His credentials also included decades as a professional musician, conductor, and composer. Regarding his choice of McGlaughlin as host, Steve Robinson stated, "As far as I'm concerned, no one can top Bill in the way he conveys his passion for music on the radio."
Development of the new program was funded by a special grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, in November 2002. The show debuted nationally on October 6, 2003. Exploring Music in essence replaced Karl Haas' long-running show, Adventures in Good Music, since the aging and retired Haas had recorded no new episodes of his show after 2002. When encore broadcasts of Adventures in Good Music ceased entirely on June 29, 2007, Exploring Music gained an even wider national listenership, as it was then scheduled in the retired show's time slot on many radio stations.
In 2013, after repeated requests from listeners and following years of negotiation with recorded-music copyright lawyers, Exploring Music reached ground-breaking legal agreements which allow it to stream any of its past shows on demand from its site.