All Classical Portland is the recent winner of the 2021 Local That Works public media contest. The station’s new Recording Inclusivity Initiative, which won the competition, aims to highlight the importance of diversity and eliminate barriers for musicians and composers who’ve been marginalized in the past. Over 100 US entries were submitted to the contest (sponsored by public media trade publication, Current) in a bid to be “recognized for excellence in media content, community engagement, and revenue initiatives”. Competing against three other finalists, All Classical Portland presented a video presentation in a webinar before viewers voted for the winner.
Diversifying recordings
The Recording Inclusivity Initiative intends to create five state-of-the-art recordings of works by women and composers of color, including: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, the late African American composer; Mélanie Hélène Bonis, a prolific French composer during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Jasmine Barnes, a Black vocalist and composer; Lauren McCall, a Black music educator and composer; and Keyla Orozco, a Cuban Dutch composer. 10 diverse musicians have recorded their works at the Boedecker Foundation’s studio in Portland. “If the recordings don’t exist, we can’t play them on the radio,” comments Suzanne Nance, All Classical Radio CEO. All Classical Portland will premiere the recordings this year, while Grammy Award-nominated Parma Recordings acts as the initiative’s official label.
Importance of representation
Adam Eccleston, an All Classical Portland artist in residence, contributed to the winning video presentation. As a child learning the flute, Eccleston dreamed of performing with an orchestra, yet soon realized a barrier existed: “Because I didn’t look like James Galway. And that started to play a role in my life, and I started to feel like there was a lot of opportunities that I wasn’t going to get because I was a Black man studying classical music,” Eccleston said. But, fortunately, Eccleston met Eric Lamb, his first Black flute teacher. “And he taught me that I can do anything I want to do,” Eccleston said. Now, Eccleston is an award-winning flutist who performs with the Oregon Symphony. He also works at Bravo Youth Orchestras, a Portland nonprofit that teaches children classical music. Traditional piano lessons, in particular, are a popular choice among children. Even online lessons via a website or app can help students learn to play songs quickly.
Moving forward
All Classical Portland were also awarded $20,000, which will be directed towards funding the next phase of the project: further “expanding it to roughly 200 peer stations”. So far, All Classical Portland has had meetings with around 14 other stations about beginning new recording projects. The Sorel Organization, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing gender and racial equity in classical music, has given additional donations to help devise a database of the recordings accessible to all stations.
The station’s motto — “Changing America’s playlist” — accurately reflects the initiative’s ultimate goal. “At the end of the day, this is all about the composers and the musicians that have been historically excluded,” Nance said. “And this moment truly belongs to them.”
