How classical stations are pushing boundaries to deepen community connections

Classical music radio stations in Kentucky, North Carolina and Texas are expanding their presences in their communities by pushing the boundaries of classical music. 

The approaches differ. KMFA in Austin and Louisville Public Media host concerts that go beyond what regular listeners might hear on the radio, with performances of classically adjacent or “indie classical” music. North Carolina’s WDAV profiles artists from underrepresented communities and hosts concerts at a brewery. 

“You can’t convince everyone to like classical music,” said Mary Lathem, marketing director for Davidson-based WDAV. “But there are so many people out there within our market that would love some aspect of classical music, even if it’s just one composer or one piece or one thing that [they] may never know about … unless we bring it to them where they are.”

Connecting with the community 

Classical stations with their fingers on the pulse in their own communities are responding to what goes on there, said Abby Goldstein, president and executive director of the Public Media Content Collective. 

“We can’t just sit under a broadcast tower and expect people to come to us,” Goldstein said. “… Radio stations should be focusing on how to build community around their stations — not just getting more people to listen to radio.”

Take KMFA, which CEO George Preston said started focusing on “indie classical” or classically adjacent music after completing its new building and event space in 2020. 

The station’s “Offbeat Series” of concerts started in 2023.

Preston describes indie classical as a new classical genre that aligns more with popular forms of music. 

“We’re leaning into the strengths of our music community here in Austin,” Preston said. “I think every station needs to figure out what they can do within their specific market to connect strongly with the music community that is there.”

‘Speaking to everybody in the community’

A recent Offbeat Series concert featured Austin Unconducted, a conductor-less orchestra, performing a piece of music created through KMFA’s Draylen Mason Composer-in-Residence program and commissioned by the station for the show. 

The composer-in-residence program was created in response to a national call for more diversity in classical music, according to KMFA’s website. 

Its aim is for composers to create new music for classical radio. Unlike the more genre-pushing Offbeat Series, the pieces produced by the composers fit into what is traditionally expected on radio, Preston said.  

“Basically, the bulk of classical repertoire has been written by Caucasian men,” Preston said. “We’ve decided, why don’t we just give some traditionally underrepresented groups more of a shot to do this?”

WDAV’s NoteWorthy Stories, meanwhile, profiles musicians of color, women and others from historically underrepresented groups. 

Approximately 90 of the two-minute features have been produced since the series began in 2023, according to Content Director Rachel Stewart. More than half the time, music by the profiled artist follows the on-air features. 

Produced by Loki Karuna and distributed by PRX to three other stations, the profiles sometimes go outside the lines of traditional classical music. Karuna is a New York City–based musician, producer, activist and administrator who got his start as an orchestral bassoonist, according to his website.  

“[Karuna] is the person that I’m aware of, in our industry, who is trying to push that boundary the most,” Stewart said. “So he’s aware of all kinds of folks who are doing interesting things that may not have even been considered by a classical station five years ago.”

WDAV’s NoteWorthy concert series also paired artists from genres like R&B, pop and hip-hop with classically trained musicians. Now on hiatus, the concert series started virtually during the pandemic and held its most recent show near the end of 2022. 

A collaboration with FAIR PLAY Music Equity Initiative, the series was paused as WDAV devotes resources to other initiatives, such as participation in the Recording Inclusivity Initiative.

“For at least the last 10 years, most of the period of time where I’ve been general manager, it’s been important to us to redefine our role from presenting classical music to building community,” said WDAV GM Frank Dominguez. “We wanted to think of ourselves as a media organization that built community and that created relationships with our listeners. And classical music was the medium we used to do that.”

But that work required asking questions about who makes up the community, Dominguez said. 

“Are we speaking to everybody in the community?” Dominguez said. “These Noteworthy efforts are worthwhile because they help us not only make our sound more vibrant and more reflective of the community, but they also have the potential of bringing new people to our station and our content.”

‘If they never listen to the radio…’ 

WDAV also hosts concerts at Charlotte brewery Free Range Brewing for its Small Batch Concert Series, which returned with a four-concert series last year after pausing during the coronavirus pandemic. Each concert was sold out or at capacity last season, Lathem said, but she added that tracking specific attendance was difficult due to no- and low-cost ticket options.

“It really removes the veneer from classical music,” said Lathem. “It’s something that you can attend with a friend where you don’t have to worry about when to clap or if it’s rude to get up and walk around. You don’t have to worry about what you’re wearing. So it’s been a way for us to really increase access to classical music for folks that might have been tentative about attending a classical music event before.”

The series returns Sept. 18 with five concerts, including a Halloween-themed musical theater show with Theatre Charlotte Oct. 16 and a March 12 concert with Phoenix Down RPG, a wind ensemble that performs music from video games and “nerdy culture,” according to its website.

Lathem said she asked audience members to raise their hands if the concert they were attending was their first WDAV event and if it was their first time hearing of WDAV. About a quarter of the concerts’ audiences were attending a station event for the first time. Roughly a tenth of attendees said it was their first time hearing of WDAV. 

The Small Batch Concert Series gives the station the chance to collect attendees’ emails, Lathem said. WDAV can then inform them of other upcoming events and ask them to join newsletter lists, Lathem said. In turn, the new contacts can discover other WDAV offerings, such as podcasts and on-air programs.

“So, we just make sure we don’t lose track of those folks and follow up so that if there are other aspects of what we do here that they find interesting, they’re able to easily access them and start their WDAV journey,” Lathem said. 

Likewise, the goal of KMFA’s Offbeat series isn’t necessarily to get more radio listeners, even as it makes the station money through ticket sales, donations and sponsorships, Preston said.

“We think of them as part of our audience family even if they’re not traditional radio listeners,” Preston said. “If they never listen to the radio, if they just keep coming to concerts and buying tickets and maybe make a donation while they’re there, that’s cool. They’re still in our brand.”

It’s a similar story for audience members of Louisville Public Media’s classically adjacent New Lens concert series, which debuted in 2019. 

“Converting those people to listeners is important, but just as important is for people to see the value in something like this and donate to us because they value this series,” said PD Daniel Gilliam.

Louisville Public Media and its classical station WUOL want to connect with people regardless of whether they are classical music fans. 

“What I hope that they do is they connect our call letters and our brand with this powerful live experience they’re having, and maybe that materializes into something more for them or telling their friends about it,” Gilliam said.

New Lens is “financially stable” with the help of support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Snowy Owl Foundation and the Amphion Foundation, Gilliam said. The 21c Museum Hotel, which hosts the concerts and is a presenting partner, also supports the series, including with in-kind donations.

Gilliam pointed out some of the shows in the series that make New Lens unique for Louisville. In 2022, the series included a performance in which a choir sang the final words of seven unarmed Black men killed by police or bystanders. Jole Thompson’s “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” also featured strings and piano. 

“No one else was presenting this work that speaks directly to a major injustice in our community,” Gilliam said, citing the deaths of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee in Louisville.

A performance art piece in April, “The Innocents,” aimed to raise awareness about lives affected by wrongful convictions.  Gilliam said WUOL couldn’t air a visual piece that doesn’t translate to broadcast, but the series allowed Louisville Public Media to present the thought-provoking work. 

“Radio can provide these unique experiences because we’re focused on things that make our community better,” Gilliam said.