In Memoriam

George Jellinek, of the opera side of WQXR.

Radio stations have personality (as well as "personalities"); at least, the good ones do.  It's why you keep the "dial" tuned to one station in preference over another, even though the playlists are similar.

WQXR, until fairly recently the radio station(s) of the New York Times. played classical music. Actually, pretty much any orchestral music up to the early 20th century and limited amounts of 20th century serious.  (Although if you wanted to hear Partch and Glass, you had to go to WNCN, and after that station left the building, the non-commercial/listener-supported/educational stations at hard-to-tune positions on the "dial.")  Every so often rock would fail to move me, so I would tune into a nice hot bath of classical music (Mom was and is an opera buff, Dad bought a few classical and jazz albums when he first bought the stereo, WKBW featured the classics on, I think, Sunday, interspersed with the Mantovani, and I had Music Appreciation in high school.  One used to hear a fair range of musical genres before demographics) for, sometimes, weeks at a time.

So, yeah, Mr. Jellinek is one of those old acquaintances one never meets, but as soon as I saw the headline I heard his voice.

And a lovely voice it was.