was for switching out scheduled music to play pieces he felt were more appropriate to the moment and more diverse," according to McQueen. Minnesota Public Radio and its larger sister organization American Public Media (APM) co-produced Classical 24. Minnesota Public Radio President Duchesne Drew and APM President Dave Kansas wrote in a statement published on September 11, 2020, that previous warnings were tied to his departure, not his music choices or his "unauthorized changes to playlists." They claim it was the manner in which he made the changes, not the actual content, which were a direct response to the murder of George Floyd in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department. The video of Floyd's murder prompted both local and international protests in the name of Black Lives Matter despite shelter-in-place orders during the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic. In posts on his social media accounts, Garrett claimed that his playlist changes were a direct response to the national events and that the audience welcomed his changes:"When things happened in the news or when there were hours of programming that only represented dead white men, I would take it upon myself to change that," said McQueen. "That always got lots of really positive feedback, but it's not exactly what protocol calls for."Yet, the collective statement from executives at MPR and APM emphasized that McQueen's departure was due to other concerns:We have a process in place for changing playlists, and that process exists to maintain our more than 200 partner stations' compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and to ensure royalties are properly paid for the music played.McQueen felt his departure was prompted by his direct on-air response to local protests:"And let's just face it," said McQueen, "with [the murder of] George Floyd and all of those things, there was a lot of pressure for me to engage the audience while that's happening. I'm on the air, literally while the 3rd Precinct is being burned down. So, it's my responsibility to make sure that the [classical] programming spoke to that and that's what I did."McQueen is a professional bassoonist, whose classical playlists reflected a "deep knowledge of the history behind classical music," given the problematic under-representation of Black composers and musicians in the field of recorded classical music and staged performance. He had played a significant role since 2018 to diversify the station's programming. MPR and APM stated that they "remain