City Newspaper Archives - 3/2008
RADIO: Mordecai Lipshutz retires
Published by Frank De Blase on Mar 06, 2008
Mordecai Lipshutz, one of the most recognizable voices on Rochester radio, announced on Wednesday that is retiring from his afternoon shift on WXXI 91.5 FM.
For more than 30 years Lipshutz has brought music to classical fans with a dignified eloquence and deep understanding of the art form.
This however, is not the final adios. You can take the boy out of music, but you can't take the music out of the boy.
"You'll still hear me bravo-ing from the balcony of the Eastman Theatre," says Lipshutz. "And I'll still be singing the last song of the Jazz Festival." He'll also continue with his Christmas and New Year shows on WXXI.
Things have changed significantly since Lipshutz hit the airways back in 1976
"Everything came over radio wires, the telephone wire," he says. "The concerts came on tapes that went from station to station to station getting progressively worse sounding as they went."
And where he marvels at the technological advances, Lipshutz laments the decline of the listening experience.
"Part of it is people just don't have the time to relax and really immerse themselves in what they're hearing," he says. "Take off their glasses, put away their computers, turn off the TV and allow themselves to be brought into the realm of the music by a person who loves the listener and loves the music, too."
Lipshutz, now 58, plans on doing some traveling, visiting relatives, and listening from the other side of the mic.
"It'll be an interesting new perspective," he says. "I thought it would be nice to have a few extra years to do some things that are new before the old rocking chair gets me."
