Saturday (7/28) on Oregon Arts Watch, Bob Hicks writes, “After 35 years, Classical Millennium, Portland’s quirky, exhaustive, and downright wonderful classical CD store, will shut its doors in September. … All across town people are mourning … Entering Classical Millennium was—is—like tumbling into a particularly inviting rabbit hole, with rarefied attractions so exotic and alluring that you might not reemerge for hours. And when eventually you do, you’re likely to be ever so slightly, and fortuitously, changed. … From a business perspective it’s tough to argue with the decision of Musical Millennium, CM’s pop/rock/blues/jazz/worldbeat/indie/everything-else corporate daddy, which has been carrying Classical Millennium for some time. The music retailing business is brutal, and Music Millennium—a great Portland indie success story in its own right—has been going through its own hard times. … For a classical music store, the forces of economic social Darwinism are even sterner. In addition to the technological and distribution revolutions that have rocked the music industry as a whole, the classical market’s drying up because classical music itself has become so marginalized: untaught and unhonored in our schools, unrecognized (with a few bright exceptions, including Portland’s All Classical 89.9) on our airwaves.”
Posted July 30, 2012
