From the website:
Launched in 1994, Classic Arts Showcase is a free cable television program designed to bring the classic arts experience to the largest audience possible by providing video clips of the arts in hopes that we may tempt you, the viewer, to go out and feast from the buffet of arts available in your community. The spectrum of classic arts disciplines aired on Classic Arts Showcase includes video samplings of animation, architectural art, ballet, chamber and choral music, dance, folk art, museum art, musical theater, opera, orchestral, recital, solo instrumental. solo vocal, and theatrical performances, as well as classic film and archival documentaries.Classic Arts Showcase is available at no cost to any cable provider willing to provide a channel. If you're lucky to live in a community in which CAS is available, you know what a wonderful service it is. If it's not available, a small number of people might be able to persuade a local provider. Here in "downstate Illinois," Elaine and I switched cable providers when one company dropped the service and another picked it up. (Take that, Mediacom.)
What I like best about Classic Arts Showcase is the chance to see and hear performers who are new to me. YouTube is great, but Classic Arts Showcase introduces me to people I wouldn't know to look for — Ruth Etting and Josef Schmidt, for instance.
Classic Arts Showcase is the work of businessman and philanthropist Lloyd Rigler (1915–2003), who with his business partner Lawrence Deutsch (1920–1977) did all sorts of good for the cause of culture.
[If you're looking for the names of the pieces played during CAS station breaks, they're here: Classic Arts Showcase background music.]
comments: 1
Classic Arts Showcase is such an extraordinary channel because Jamie Rigler, who programs the show, is extremely talented and knowlegable. His selection and juxtaposition of the material is a very specialized art form.
Most of the regular viewers are much like you--intelligent, thinking people who love the arts, and want to share that love with anyone of like mind, regardless of their class, color, background or educational level. (By the way, Lloyd Rigler was a philosophy major, at U. Illinois, I believe)
Here in Los Angeles, our "cultural buffet" overfloweth. The problem is choosing amongst jazz, ballet, discussions, opera, symphony, film--and more. I hope you have opportunities in your local community to attend live performances. The names may not be as big, but sometimes that student recital, or "garage band" playing at a local watering hole can be far more exciting than a "ho-hum, take the money and run" concert. It really means a lot to young performers when the audience includes people who are not friends or family, but real "ticket buyers" who just came to see the show.
I am not associated with the program or the foundation.
the fat lady
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