President’s Page
| If you’re somewhere on the freeways or streets around our campuses, you’ll likely notice a city Dash bus adorned with a huge picture of a violin and a catchy tagline: “Less Stress, More Strauss.” It’s a promotion for classical KUSC-FM, one of the nation’s great cultural treasures and the most listened-to public radio station in Southern California. In one week, more people listen to KUSC than in a year attend classical concerts by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Pacific Symphony combined. And now, because KUSC is streaming its programming online, the station is sharing its riches with listeners around the globe.
If you have tuned in to KUSC recently, you will understand why its popularity is on the rise. I enjoy KUSC because it plays great classical music. But it does far more than that. The station also educates its audience. Listening to KUSC is like sitting in on a master class with a passionate professor who is eager to elucidate the intricate moods, motifs and textures of a particular piece of music, as well as share details about how the work was created and how the composition connects to the larger world of history, literature and fine art. KUSC is part of a thriving cultural and artistic scene at the University of Southern California. USC has five schools devoted to the arts: the Roski School of Fine Arts, the School of Architecture, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Theatre and the Thornton School of Music. Collectively, these five schools constitute the strongest offerings in the arts of any university in the nation. Every day countless USC alumni, faculty and students are using their creative talents to advance music, film, television, new media, painting and sculpture, the built environment and stagecraft. They’re creating new ways of seeing, hearing, storytelling, and interpreting life and meaning through the arts. The entire city of Los Angeles is experiencing this extraordinary vitality. Think about the scope and depth: from Exposition Park – home to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California Science Center and the California African American Museum – northward to the Staples Center, the new Nokia Theatre, Disney Hall, the Music Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art and even farther north to the Autry National Center and the Griffith Observatory; add to this the east-west transept, from the Getty Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to the Japanese American National Museum. I haven’t even included in this snapshot the multitudes of galleries, smaller stages, jazz platforms, dance and theatre troupes, and film festivals. Los Angeles has been called the “creative capital of the world,” and, according to the nonprofit organization Americans for the Arts, Los Angeles County has more than 1,000 arts organizations. Artistic and cultural vibrancy suffuses this city, and everywhere you look, members of the Trojan Family are at the center of this strong creative current. At USC we believe that the arts expand our minds, elevate our spirits, spark our creativity, touch our hearts and illumine the human condition. They also enhance the university’s central mission, which is to “help our students acquire wisdom and insight, love of truth and beauty, moral discernment, understanding of self, and respect and appreciation for others.” As you read about KUSC in this issue of the magazine, I believe you’ll agree with me that the station serves us all well in its first-rate dissemination of classical music with a strong educational component along with reporting on arts and culture in the Southland. Like so many of USC’s “exports,” KUSC sends a strong message about what we value: the confluence of intelligence and imagination that truly constitutes the heart of the arts. |
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