Alan McLellan has retired after nearly 30 years at Classical Radio Boston and GBH Music. He's been a familiar voice Saturday nights for over ten years, and has worked on countless live broadcasts, studio performances, and television specials. In a wide-ranging look back, Alan shares what's changed, what's stayed the same, and what he's learned since arriving in 1998. He spoke with WCRB Operations Manager Phil Jones.
Phil Jones: We'll start with the easiest one. When did you start working at WGBH?
Alan McClellan: Well, even that is a little bit complicated. I came to Boston in 1998, started looking for work, and had some experience in public broadcasting. I had one or two contacts at GBH, and they didn't have any openings right then, but there was a radio program being produced at Northeastern University for public broadcast on GBH and on a fairly large number of stations around the country. It was called "A Note to You," and it had been hosted by Roland Nadeau, who had been a kind of a pillar in the music community, but had passed away the previous year. And the successor to Roland was a woman named Virginia Eskin, whose personality just overflowed with enthusiasm. It was a great time putting together a show with her and having a little office at Northeastern for a year and a half or so, and I really enjoyed working on that, but it did not last because everyone wanted to hear Roland Nadeau! And he was gone. That was my introduction to GBH, because the production was done here. And then in September of 2000, I started working for GBH directly.
Phil Jones: And what was that first role when you started at GBH proper?
Alan McLellan: As so many start, I started as a production assistant, and then after a few months, I was made an associate producer. I was working with several people that were producing regular performances on the radio that took place, usually at the noon hour, on a program called "Classical Performances" with Richard Knisely. I worked with Richard for several years and we had all kinds of really interesting performers. The musicians were so agreeable and so willing to work with us, and some became friends I've stayed in touch with over the years.
Phil Jones: Had you been on air at all before you arrived at GBH?
Alan McLellan: Pretty much never! I had produced one documentary and done a few little things. Before I came to GBH, I worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). It was very similar to what I ended up doing here, except that I eventually got to be on the air here after several years. My first boss at GBH thought I didn't really have the gift of the gab, which I don't! But I have adapted for that by scripting myself and thinking about what I'm going to say in advance. The kind of glib, overflowing, amount of talk is not my nature. But then a new manager came along. They had a spot to fill, and they thought I had a nice voice!
Phil Jones: What do you remember about your first on-air shift?
Alan McLellan: What I remember about my first on air shift is terror, and a sense that I was at sea improvising, putting together words from nothing and not really able to form ideas that could be compressed into the amount of time that you have normally in an air break. So that was a challenge! I eventually adapted and started thinking of it in different ways. The assignment at first was mid-mornings, where I had three or four hours, one of which was dedicated to recordings that we received from the European Broadcasting Union, some of which were very recent. So that was a fun little project to do and was part of my first foray into broadcasting. And then I did evenings regularly starting probably in 2014 or so and that lasted for quite a while up until and then through the pandemic.
Doing evenings was really wonderful in the sense that it's an intimate relationship with one other person, and it's easy to imagine that, as you're sitting there in front of the microphone, a person at the other end is just needing some beautiful music to listen to at the end of the evening and maybe a voice to tell them what it was, or to tell him what the day's going to be like the next day. I was able to free myself from the obligation to be glib.
Phil Jones: What a relief! when you were growing up in Vancouver, what did you imagine you would be when you were older?
Alan McLellan: I didn't really know! When I went into university, I thought I wanted to be a psychology major. I did a couple years of psych and then realized that music was so much more fun! So, then I was a voice major and I had a performance-oriented degree. But one of the things I was doing as a student was recording student recitals, and so I got a lot of experience on professional equipment, doing audio engineering work, and I really enjoyed that. I had a friend who had gone to the CBC after graduating and I followed him there, and I guess he was a good enough employee that they thought they could hire me.
Phil Jones: Looking back, what's an aspect of your career that would surprise people getting into radio now?
Alan McLellan: Ah, you're getting at the trolley!
Phil Jones: Explain the trolley.
Alan McLellan: Well, I worked as an operating technician for several years at CBC, and then I got a full-time position in Edmonton producing the regional music program there. And in Edmonton, they had a wonderful little cafeteria where there was two or three ladies who would love to bake. And they would come around to the studio with a trolley, and they'd yell, "Coooooffeeeeeee!" And everything would stop. You'd stop production. And there'd be a little bit of cake or something like that. And you'd get a little break. And then we'd go on with our work. Coming to GBH, that has never happened for me, unfortunately. It'd be so funny because you'd be in the middle of something, deeply in the middle of a production, you're racking your brain for how to solve a problem, and you'd hear this "coooooffeeeeee!" And it would be the perfect answer to whatever problem you were trying to solve.
Phil Jones: You have been on this long journey, exploring music from all over the world, both contemporary and ancient. Are there any recordings that you've discovered in your work here that have really stuck with you that you felt like have changed your life?
Alan McLellan: A recording that really moved me to love opera is the recording with Victoria de los Angeles & Jussi Björling of "La Bohème" from the 1950s. It's a monophonic recording... it's not something that you would put up as a model of fidelity, but it is a model of musicianship and both of those singers are just an inspiration to me. So I got sold on opera because of that recording.
In coming here, Vaughn-Williams' "Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis" has been a big one. It's a moving piece, but it's not necessarily moving if you hear it by itself. The piece that inspired it, the piece by Thomas Tallis called "Why'd Fum'th In Sight't," is really a quote from a Psalm, and it's a triumphant marching piece almost. But then this fantasia is this... amazing ethereal kind of meditation on that music, and it's extremely moving to hear them together. I think it's moving because of the juxtaposition of the two. When we play them back to back I think its tremendously moving.
Phil Jones: I would agree. What's one of the coolest projects you've gotten to work on here?
Alan McLellan: Well, during the pandemic, there were quite a few artists that were casting about for what to do, including Yo-Yo Ma. And he came and performed at the studio! That first one, I don't think I was involved with, but the second time he came, which was a few months later, he came with Emmanuel Ax and they played Beethoven. And it was just stunning. And it was just an amazing experience and wonderful to get to know them a little bit over the course of that project. Yo-Yo Ma is always so friendly with everyone he meets and remembers people's names and is an astounding artist as well.
Some of my most rewarding on-air experiences have been having the opportunity to interview artists. My first radio project was where I was kind of in charge of the whole thing was interviewing the great choral conductor Eric Ericson from Sweden, who is kind of the father of a lot of international choral music. He was such an influential figure and had this amazing approach to choral conducting, which led me to go off and do a master's in choral conducting. Another interview that was wonderful for me was with another Scandinavian; Herbert Blomstedt, who's still going as a conductor. When he's come to perform at the Boston Symphony, he's just an amazing wealth of information, engagement and generosity when it comes to making music.
Phil Jones: What do you think the biggest change you've been through at GBH is since you started?
Alan McLellan: Well, I guess the biggest change was moving to this beautiful, big, new building in 2007! We had been working in a kind of a warren of rooms in the first floor of the building on Western Avenue, and that was fine, but this was so much more spacious, and the studio that we have the opportunity to use for performances has been a wonderful resource. I don't think we could have known how important it would become for video projects.
Phil Jones: How do you think you've changed since you started?
Alan McLellan: [Laughs] I'm exactly the same! I haven't changed a bit! Really, I've just learned so much from everyone that I've worked with here. I can say that of everyone that I've worked with, even the ones that were harder to get along with. It's been just a wonderful journey of learning. I might have had different ambitions when I started than when I ended up, but as time went on, it felt like the perfect fit. And I've never regretted the things that I've done.
Phil Jones: And do you know what you want to do next?
Alan McLellan: Not really! I want to read a lot of books. I want to think about music in different ways, but I want to keep on thinking about music. I want to continue singing, and I have a couple of different groups that I sing with, and I enjoy that very much. I volunteer at my church and do various things like that. One of the things I've really enjoyed learning in the last few years since COVID, was that I got to work in video for the first time and that was really fun and exciting. We'll just have to see!
Phil Jones: Can you think about what you're most grateful for in your time here?
Alan McLellan: I think I'm most grateful for the opportunities to meet these amazing musicians! I feel like the opportunity to kind of vicariously live in their world and to be associated with them for a project or for a longer time has been really one of the most wonderful things.
Phil Jones: What do you hope for the station and for public media as a whole?
Alan McLellan: Public media matters so much in terms of information and in terms of art, and there are needs that people have that could not be met in the commercial marketplace. And in fact, when I look at the commercial marketplace, it seems to be dictating how people feel about their culture. And I think the engagement with history that we have is just an amazing privilege, and I think it's a need. Listeners have a need for solace, clarity, information, history, connection, all these things that are so important to our lives that they couldn't be met without public broadcasting.
For GBH and CRB... I hope that the station can thrive and that we can continue to provide an opportunity for musicians to be heard by other people in the community, and that we can also share just this love of music. I think this is something that I hadn't really connected with until becoming an announcer, this idea that as a person, you are sharing yourself, a little bit of yourself, and your love for music with each listener. And I think that's not something that any of us should take for granted.
I feel really good about how the station's going to carry on. As far as how I feel about how I'm going to spend my time in the future, it'll be new vistas! I won't have the same kind of demands on my time. and so that's going be a huge change. But I'm sure it'll positive. And I'm going to live each day at a time.
Phil Jones: Especially your Saturday nights!
Alan McLellan: Especially Saturday nights.
Alan was the longtime Saturday night host on WCRB, having hosted numerous dayparts since arriving in 1998. You can read and listen to more of his work here.
