‘This station is about Kansas City’: Tune into classics again on this radio signal

For a town so passionate about classical music, with arts organizations large and small turning out world-class music, it’s shameful that Kansas City has been without a classical radio since 2012. That was the year Entercom Broadcasting blew up long-time classical radio station KXTR and replaced it with a talk/business format.

But now KCUR public radio, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a host of Kansas City’s charitable foundations have come to the rescue.

A frequency on the FM dial has been purchased and 91.9 Classical KC is on the air as of last Monday.

The station has been three years in the making. In 2017, Nico Leone, former general manager of KCUR, told Stephen Steigman, the station’s director of broadcast operations, he wanted to share an idea.

“And I said to him, ‘Funny, I wanted to share an idea with you, as well,’” Steigman said.

Steigman and Leone both hoped to start a classical station. They decided that in order for it to be a success, a real community service to Kansas City, it had to be locally focused and locally programmed.

The wheels were set in motion and an engineering firm was hired to see if any frequencies were available. About two weeks later, they received an email saying, “Hey, we got a bite.”

It turned out that William Jewell College owned a signal at 91.9 FM, which they were leasing to the Educational Media Foundation, and they were ready to sell.

“We met with folks from William Jewell College, and once they found out it was KCUR and we were looking at the classical format, they were delighted,” Steigman said.

Plans proceeded smoothly with funds provided by some of Kansas City’s most important foundations, and it looked like Classical KC was soon to become a reality. But in March, COVID-19 raised its ugly head.

“All of a sudden, a couple of foundations said, ‘We love the project, but we have some other priorities right now. Can you wait for half a year?’” Steigman said. “We said we would love to, but we can’t because we have to buy the station now or it has to go on the market. My guess is that Education Media Foundation would have purchased the station, and it would have been gone from the local market forever.”

Steigman and his team adjusted their budgets and, in order to seize the day, decided to scale back their plans for a fully local station. For the time being, most of the programming will be provided by various syndicated services, with plans to make the station local by 2022.

“We are going to program a rich mix of classical music and insert as much local programming as we can as time moves on,” Steigman said.

For now, the bulk of the programming will be provided by Minnesota Pubic Radio’s Classical 24, a syndicated service that provides a mix of classical music presented by personable hosts.

But giving the station a local flavor is key to distinguishing Classical KC from the choices available on the internet. Especially now, during the pandemic, Steigman believes the station can provide an invaluable service.

“We knew that a lot of Kansas City’s arts organizations were facing the potential of a year or more of no audiences,” he said. “So what can we do to partner with these organizations and get them in front of audiences at a time when they needed to be in front of audiences the most?”

Steigman is hoping Classical KC will be able to curate on its website the ever-burgeoning livestreams that local arts organizations are producing during the pandemic. Then he would like to air the audio portion of the livestreams on the station.

Elizabeth Suh Lane’s Bach Aria Soloists has been especially creative with livestreaming during the pandemic. She sees great potential in partnering with Classical KC.

“We are really looking forward to having a full-time classical music radio station in Kansas City once again,” she said. “It’s an especially good time to have a local station that will be supportive and a trumpet for small organizations like Bach Aria Soloists, a grassroots chamber music organization.”

Tapping talent nationwide

But while the station is broadcasting mostly syndicated programs, Steigman has several sources to spice things up.

At 5 p.m. weekdays, Classical KC will air the Peabody Award-winning “Performance Today,” followed at 7 p.m. by “Exploring Music With Bill McGlaughlin,” former music director of the Kansas City Symphony. Weeknights from 8 to 10 p.m., various symphony orchestra concerts will be featured. For example, Tuesday nights it’s the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Fridays it’s the New York Philharmonic, hosted by none other than actor Alec Baldwin.

Weekends feature programs to appeal to a wide variety of tastes. For opera lovers, there’s WFMT’s Opera Series at noon every Saturday.

“I said I was going to set aside three hours each week for opera,” Steigman said.

“Somebody asked, ‘What if it’s Wagner?’ Wouldn’t you know, the very first weekend we’re on the air, it’s ‘Die Walküre.’ Four hours and 19 minutes. Ho jo to ho!”

Other weekend programs include “The Score,” a film music program, and “From the Archive,” hosted by Frank Byrne, former executive director of the Kansas City Symphony.

Steigman says he wants Classical KC to serve the entire community and reflect its diversity. One program he’s excited about is “Concierto,” which will air at 2 p.m. Sundays. It’s two hours of music composed and performed by Latinos from around the world. The program will be announced in both Spanish and English.

“It’s super important to me that we’re intentional about reaching out to diverse audiences,” Steigman said. “When we play music either performed or composed by African-Americans and all people of color, it’s important that it not be a one-off; that it’s not something we do because it’s a popular thing to do right now. Music of diverse composers and performers has to be a part of the fabric of this station.”

Changing radio listening habits

Steigman acknowledges that radio listening habits have changed in the past few years and that many younger listeners don’t even have radios in their houses. Streaming services like Spotify and listening to music on smart speakers, tablets and computers has become the norm. He’s kept these new paradigms in mind while developing Classical KC.

“It’s a major part of our strategy,” he said. “91.9 is not the strongest signal in Kansas City, and we knew that going into this.”

Which means the team is putting resources into “ensuring that our stream, all-digital, with great encoding and great processing, sounds as good as it can,” Steigman said.

For Steigman, Classical KC is “coming full circle.”

“When I moved to Kansas City in 1995, I thought I would stay for three or four years and then get back to the East Coast where I had grown up. But I stayed,” he said.

“You’ll probably hear my voice on Classical KC and I’m hoping that I will be able to host some conversations and conduct some interviews, but this station is not about me. This station is about Kansas City and how fantastic its music scene is.”

For more information and to listen to the audio stream, go to classicalkc.org.

You can reach Patrick Neas at patrickneas@kcartsbeat.com and follow his Facebook page, KC Arts Beat, at www.facebook.com/kcartsbeat.

This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 10:00 AM.