MPR People

Bill Morelock

Host, Classical Music
Minnesota Public Radio
bmorelock@mpr.org

Bill Morelock fell into radio as a refugee from graduate school. This was in Pullman, Washington, where Murrow learned how to speak like Murrow. A permanent inferiority complex developed. In 1988, he conspired with Bob Christiansen to create the daily classical music show, Bob & Bill. It was distributed nationally by NPR from 1991-1996. In Minnesota, Morelock has worked at WCAL in Northfield, and at Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul. He writes an occasional piece of prose, occasionally funny, but not often enough to really annoy anyone.

Bill Morelock Feature Archive

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Clarinetist Stanley Drucker retires from NY Philharmonic

Stanley Drucker joined the New York Philharmonic in 1948 at the age of 19. He's retiring as the orchestra's principal clarinet at the end of the season. Tomorrow night, he will perform his last solo work, a concerto that's just as old as his tenure with the Philharmonic: Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto. (06/05/2009)

Gallic Ghost Story

The popular notion is that any self-respecting ghost story must pack a nightmarish punch. But Bill Morelock tells a tale of two amusing and inspiring spectres. (10/27/2006)

The Coffee Can Country Club

Classical music host Bill Morelock has never seen a prettier golf course than one in Salem, Oregon. He built it himself, at age 11. (10/13/2006)

Through many mirrors, dimly: 100 years of Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on September 25, 1906. Years after his death, he remains one of the most important figures in 20th-century classical music and one of the most controversial. Under pressure from Soviet authorities, he compromised his art. At least that was how it seemed. (09/25/2006)

Chamber music marks Shostakovich centenary

To mark the centenary of the birth of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, classical host Bill Morelock presented a program in Minnesota Public Radio's UBS Forum. Morelock discussed Shostakovich and his compositions with his guests, pianist Alexander Braginsky and cellist Tanya Remenikova. (09/25/2006)

Aaron Copland: writing the soundtrack of the American West

How did Aaron Copland come to write music to accompany the balletic adventures of cowboys, desperadoes, and pioneer homesteaders? Open Air host Bill Morelock throws a lasso around the memory of this influential American composer. (11/14/2005)

Miracle on 57th Street

On Nov. 13, 1943, 25 year-old Leonard Bernstein heard his song cycle "I Hate Music" premiered in New York. A fine title by a young man who, the very next day, would become the most famous musician in America. Open Air host Bill Morelock follows Leonard Bernstein on perhaps the most remarkable day in a remarkable life in music. (08/30/2005)

The Waltz King and the Land of Giants

When Johann Strauss, Jr. came to America in 1872, concert promoters in Boston went all out. They built a great wooden hall which held an audience of 100,000, not to mention an additional 20,000 singers and musicians. Strauss conducted his own music, communicating with the multitudes through 100 assistant conductors. A sincere expression of our love of Strauss' music (or celebrity?), or a megalomaniacal lust for spectacle? Strauss was pretty sure he knew. Bill Morelock looks at the American sojourn of a reluctant Waltz King. (08/09/2005)

Edvard Grieg: absolute quiet and a taste of codfish

Classical music host Bill Morelock remembers composer Edvard Grieg on his 162nd birthday. (06/14/2005)

How "Les Six" became the most recognizable brand in French music

Classical host Bill Morelock looks at how a proto-marketing campaign in 1917 made infamous the composers Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre, Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, and Louis Durey. (05/28/2005)

Before the Six, there was Satie

When French composer Erik Satie wrote the music for "Parade" during World War I, he set in motion the attitude for Paris of the 1920s. (05/28/2005)

A mountaintop gone; a life remembered

Sydney Fortunato lived, and died, in what may have been the last snippet of time during which the light in a small storefront bookstore on an early autumn evening could still calm the soul. (05/18/2005)

Conscience vs. McCarthy: the political Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland has been synonymous with American music for more than 60 years. But during the McCarthy era, not even the composer of Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man--two WWII morale boosters--was immune from Sen. Joseph McCarthy's questions about political affiliations in the thirties and forties. Classical musical host Bill Morelock traces the activities of Aaron Copland the composer and Copland the citizen leading up to a cancelled performance and an offical grilling in 1953. (05/03/2005)

The career path of J. S. Bach; from Arnstadt to Leipzig

Even geniuses have have not-so-great jobs like the common folk. Open Air host Bill Morelock wonders how J. S. Bach could have created so many well-crafted pieces while he labored long days in undesirable employment. (04/26/2005)

The Lads in Their Hundreds: the music of World War I

Classical music host Bill Morelock examines the music by French and English composers written during and in the immediate aftermath of The Great War. (04/05/2005)