A Media Legend Brings Musical Magic To Kids

That face and that voice are still deeply familiar to Seattle TV audiences, who watched Cliff Lenz in 17 seasons of the "Seattle Today" show.

Now it's Lenz's voice that will go out over the airwaves to elementary schools - up to 486 of them - throughout Western Washington beginning this week, when the first program in a two-month series of "Music From Starwind Studios" is broadcast over the KING-FM airwaves (98.1 mHz).

You might guess that Lenz is behind a program to get classical music into the classrooms, enhancing existing music programs for fourth- through sixth-graders (and helping to make up for programs that have gotten the budgetary ax).

During his TV days, Lenz's "Music Magic" program was broadcast for 11 years on KING-TV and was considered one of the best programs of its kind nationwide, winning numerous awards, including two Parents' Choice awards and the American Legion's Golden Mike Award for the best youth program.

Lenz is an impassioned advocate for children's music programs, so it's not surprising to hear the excitement in his voice as he talks about the concept for the new "Music From Starwind Studios." The series of free, 20-minute broadcasts, which starts Thursday at 1:05 p.m., is funded by longtime arts activist Priscilla Bullitt Collins.

It's an ambitious concept.

"The idea is an imaginary broadcast studio," Lenz says, "that has an engineer in the control room as the host. He can tap into any of the studios by intercom. In one studio there's the `Starwind Symphony Orchestra'; in another, there are rock musicians or country-Western players. We can tape a conversation with a musician, such as guitarist Christopher Parkening, and follow it with a recording of his music, and it sounds as if he's right there in the studio with us.

"The musicians illustrate principles of classical music that apply to every kind of music. We have a rock guitarist playing the big orchestral chords from Mussorgsky's `Great Gate of Kiev' as power chords on the guitar. Country-Western guys warm up by playing Rimsky-Korsakov's `Flight of the Bumblebee.'

"We start with stuff that's familiar to kids, including the theme music from the Jack-in-the-Box ads, and use it to show how music works."

The series includes a blast from the past, with the imaginary "Cybertime Studio" sending listeners back in time to talk to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven - with plenty of humorous vignettes.

There's also a heavily programmatic element (employing music that's supposed to illustrate something, as in the clip-clopping of the donkey in "Grand Canyon Suite" or the out-of-control magic in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"). Each broadcast ends with such a piece, in which kids are supposed to imagine themselves as the composer: what are they trying to convey in "Victory At Sea" or "Appalachian Spring"?

"You wouldn't believe the variety of responses we got when we tested this," Lenz says.

Fifth-grade teacher Krist Sharpe concurs. When the pilot program was aired in her classroom at Meridian Park Elementary in the Shoreline District, Sharpe says, "The kids were really excited by what they heard. They had no idea that rock was related to classical music or that tunes could be borrowed and played on the electric guitar.

"We had some great discussions from the `Grand Canyon Suite,' about what the music might mean and where it might take you." These discussions, Sharpe feels, can carry over into other aspects of the curriculum, too.

The idea for the radio series has been lurking in Lenz's mind for some time, possibly stirred by memories of those Standard School Broadcasts (older readers may recall hearing these piped into their classrooms years ago). When Lenz called Peter Newman at KING-FM, he found receptive ears.

Doesn't he miss TV?

"I can honestly say that I haven't missed being on TV," says Lenz, who left KING-TV in 1991. During his show's heyday, it was the most successful locally produced talk show in the country, watched by about two-thirds of all those watching TV during its time slot.

Since then, Lenz has done freelance TV work, media consulting, speaker training and commercial writing. He has watched "some dramatic changes in TV during the last five years - but we haven't seen anything yet. The online revolution begun by the computers is going to change TV much more drastically in the future."

Television is becoming "more oriented to the whims and demands of the viewer," Lenz says, and is something he sees as detrimental to society.

"Our shared world view is becoming narrower and narrower," he says, "shrinking the universal themes that hold us together as a democratic society." Lenz feels if we stay away from the mall and buy through TV, if we stay away from the movie theater and the concert hall and watch everything through video, we lose a great deal.

"There is a real longing in people to see the real thing," Lenz says. "We grow to miss that phenomenon, the specialness of the event. There is no comparison between renting `Schindler's List' on video and going to it in the theater, where you walk out crying along with everyone else."

Despite his misgivings about the isolating factors in high-tech environments, Lenz believes technology has a lot of untapped uses.

"The concept of the concert hall hasn't changed in 300 years," he says. "I'd love to see orchestras and other musical groups have a high-tech presentation, with high-definition closed-circuit TVS in the theater showing the musicians in a bigger, clearer way, just as they do at sports events.

"Those musicians are pretty far away from the audience. We need to show that they are gymnasts and athletes, so to speak, to bring them down from Mount Olympus. We can't afford to be stodgy and aloof. We have to adapt. And we have to do whatever it takes to `get them into the tent.' "