Bill McGlaughlin, a composer, conductor and public-radio host whose long-running, richly varied programs “Saint Paul Sunday” and “Exploring Music” were admired by the general public and professional musicians alike, died on July 21 at his home in Manhattan. He was 82.
His wife, the jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson, said the cause was sudden cardiac arrest.
Mr. McGlaughlin “almost single-handedly kept alive a sophisticated approach to what used to be called ‘music appreciation,’” the pianist and teacher Paul Orgel said in an interview.
“His range of musical enthusiasms was enormous,” Mr. Orgel added. “His manner was straightforward, kind and unpretentious. And, most importantly, he played vast amounts of serious music, always in well-chosen performances. He didn’t shy away from vocal music, challenging new music or obscure works that deserve exposure.”
Soft-spoken, with a manner that was folksy yet knowledgeable, Mr. McGlaughlin illuminated classical music through forays into jazz, folk traditions, history, literature and many other fields.
By the time he began his radio work, he was already an experienced musician. He had a bachelor’s degree (1967) and a master’s (1969), both in music, from Temple University and played in the trombone section of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under William Steinberg.
Steinberg encouraged him to try his hand at conducting, and Georg Solti, another esteemed conductor, advised him that he would need regular practice with an orchestra.
So in the early 1970s, Mr. McGlaughlin formed three ensembles in the Pittsburgh area. A grant-making partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the Exxon Corporation then helped fund a conducting position for him at the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota, where he honed his skills from 1975 to 1982.
While in Saint Paul, Mr. McGlaughlin spoke regularly to audiences before performances, explaining the program and pointing out what to listen for. Garrison Keillor, then early in his tenure as host of “A Prairie Home Companion” on Minnesota Public Radio, heard one of the preconcert talks and invited Mr. McGlaughlin to fill in occasionally as a morning show host.
This led to “Saint Paul Sunday,” originally called “Saint Paul Sunday Morning,” which Mr. McGlaughlin hosted from 1980 to 2007. (Reruns were aired until 2012.) By the time the show won a Peabody Award in 1995, it was heard by roughly 600,000 listeners each week on over 200 stations, making it the most widely listened-to classical music program in the country.
William McGlaughlin was born in Philadelphia on Oct. 3, 1943, the eldest child of his father, an architectural draftsman also named William McGlaughlin, and his mother, Catharine (Hogan) McGlaughlin, who taught English in the Philadelphia schools once her children were grown.
His parents were music lovers, and he grew up listening to classical and opera records, and playing the harmonica with his father. He had his first piano lesson at 14, when he filled in for a younger brother who quit during a series of prepaid lessons. By his second lesson, he was hooked. He soon began playing the trombone as well.
During his time as “Saint Paul Sunday” host, Mr. McGlaughlin also served as the music director of orchestras in Eugene, Ore.; Tucson, Ariz.; and San Francisco; and, from 1986 to 1998, of the Kansas City Symphony. There, he expanded the ensemble’s repertory, receiving five ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming for championing contemporary music.
After leaving Kansas City in 1998, he moved to New York, where he began composing. He also produced for and assisted on Ms. Allyson’s recordings, and sometimes accompanied her on tour.
He married her in 2025 after 35 years of partnership. In addition to her, he is survived by two children from an earlier marriage, Kathleen McGlaughlin and Bill McGlaughlin; a grandson; and five siblings, Jake McGlaughlin, Dick McGlaughlin, Kathleen Gillespie, Ed McGlaughlin and Tom McGlaughlin.
In 2003, he started hosting, from New York, “Exploring Music” for WFMT in Chicago; he also wrote the program’s opening music.
“We were talking about doing a single theme per week, which gives you room to have the kind of depth you don’t usually get in radio,” Mr. McGlaughlin later recalled in an interview with Princeton Info. “One thing we thought we might do is play the same piece twice; nobody ever does that. You could play something and then develop a whole idea and come back and see how it sounded after that.”
By 2008, the show had more than 400,000 weekly listeners. Mr. McGlaughlin continued making new episodes until the end of 2025, when he was let go in a wave of layoffs at the station.
Mr. McGlaughlin never used scripts, likening his hosting style to jazz in an interview with The Charleston Gazette of West Virginia in 2008: “I know where I’m going, but I don’t know exactly what I am going to say next. “
“People write to me and the first thing they say is that they know nothing about music, but they always write so intelligently,” he added. “Maybe this show can help them a little bit.”
