Rise Of The Classical Music Audioblog?

As Joseph Kahn notes, audioblogs are thriving, with free, downloadable Wilco and Sonic Youth gigs sweeping through cyberspace. That's a dream if your idea of music begins and ends with jam bands and indie rock darlings. But what about those of us who want to hear a little Ravel along with our Ryan Adams?

That's where Gina Rivera comes to the rescue. Rivera, a 26-year-old Harvard PhD student in musicology, has a recent post that links to clips of Schumann, Bernart De Ventadorn, and Lucas Santtana.

In an e-mail, Rivera explains why we should also forgive her for dropping indie players like Jolie Holland into the mix.

"I began the blog with an indie pop orientation because as I looked around at the site traffic for most mp3 blogs about a year ago, the ones with the swarms of readers were posting up-to-the-minute indie tracks and pre-releases. I figured if I wanted any traffic at all, I better not begin by posting Vivaldi.

Since last summer, I've begun to let my day-to-day musicology-type studying creep into the blog, posting the occasional classical or early music track. I'm happy enough with the mix of things; since I'm not a devoted classical site along the lines of something like Alex Ross's blog, I don't mind keeping up this odd balance. I'd say the majority of people stopping by the site are doing so for the independent-label pop connections anyway."

Fair enough, Gina. We're not counting traffic here. We just want to encourage you to embrace your inner-PhD... Keep the cantatas coming.