How Do You Prepare Your Shows?
Margaret Lewis, Classical Spectrum and A Classical DJ
Greetings, Fellow KMUDders
In 1988, Harold Day was Program Manager and he mentioned to me that there was a slot for a classical show. I have a classical music background and said I’d do it. The catch? It was 6-9 am on Saturday! Ok, so I’ll go with it. And you know what? It really wasn’t that bad.
About a year later, I got the idea for a story show. We already had a Sunday morning children’s show (which, by the way, has survived until this day!), but I wanted to target older kids in the 9-11 year range. So I started Stories For Young People. It was fifteen minutes every week day, just before the news. I serialized books for young people and continued for about eleven years.
As far as prep for shows goes, that seems to be an ongoing process. Whenever I hear an unfamiliar piece of music or a new composer, my mind is evaluating: would that fit into Classical Spectrum? Or Thursday night Classical DJ? One factor that has had an enormous effect in broadening my scope is yearly attendance at the Humboldt Chamber Music Workshops. Since 1986, I have spent a week, sometimes more, playing a variety of chamber music and listening to an even wider range of composers and instrumentation. Bringing my notes home, I research the various composers and expand my library accordingly. As far as weekly prep goes, it varies. Sometimes using a theme or time period as a guide, sometimes instrumentation. It helps to pick a major work and then build around that.
When I first started on that early Saturday morning show, during training, Harold gave me a funny little smile and said, “You can play whatever you want.” Really? The door was wide open, just step through and figure it out:
What is it that you want to play? I’ve spent the intervening years figuring it out.
Harold, thanks for opening that door.
You can find Margaret’s shows on KMUD archives. |
