Personal
Champaign-Urbana Folk and Roots Festival
Between the spring of 2011 and the spring of 2016, I was a member of the booking committee for the Champaign-Urbana Folk and Roots Festival, an annual, community-organized music festival that continues to be held every November and features artists from across the diverse genres of American folk music. I took a break from the festival during my sabbatical year (AY2016-17), served again on the booking committee for the 10th anniversary festival in October 2018 and served as secretary on the festival steering committee from 2019 through my next sababtical (AY2023-24). The festival is still going strong, and you should come check it out!
Music Blog
From 2008 to 2011, I posted regularly on a music blog called The Sound of Blackbirds.
Radio DJ
For 11 years, I was a radio DJ on WKCR-FM in New York City. From June 1998 to May 2009, I hosted a program called The Moonshine Show that showcased bluegrass and old-time string band music. (There has been bluegrass on WKCR since 1963, when Peter Wernick--a Columbia undergraduate who went on to get his Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia before becoming a part of the bluegrass band Hot Rize and then the first president of the International Bluegrass Music Association--started a show called Bluegrass Special.) The show still airs from 10:00 a.m. to noon on most Sundays and can be heard in the greater New York metropolitan area and on the Internet. The program frequently features live bands and telephone interviews with national bluegrass musicians.
From January 2002 through January 2007, I co-hosted a radio program called Live from Miller Theatre with George Steel, who was then the Executive Director of Miller Theatre (Columbia University's performing arts producer) and then moved on to become the head of New York City Opera and the Abrams Curator of Music at the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum. The program featured an eclectic mix of contemporary classical music, early music, jazz and radio oddities, and we frequently had composers and performers in as live guests.
At other times, I also hosted WKCR's blues, country, gospel and classical programs. And I used to participate each December in the station's Bach Festival, which features nothing but the music of Johann Sebastian Bach 24 hours a day for over a week.
