Christa talks about how she got into radio, her favorite pieces, and what she’s discovered about today’s young musicians:

Hometown: Indianapolis, IN
First Job: A fast-food chicken joint in Indy. (The first job I was proud of was as Box Office Manager for a small Chicago-based ensemble, Music of the Baroque.)
Years in Radio:  I started volunteering at a free-format community station in Durham, NC around 1994. I took my first job as a professional classical radio host in 1998 at WCPE in Raleigh, NC.
Years at All Classical: I came aboard at All Classical Portland in the summer of 2007.

How did you become a radio announcer?
It as a total fluke! I studied classical music in college with the hope of becoming a professional French horn player, but when that dream fell apart I was left with a music degree and nothing to apply it to. I started working in Arts Administration (principally in IT and Box Office) and to pass the time in those office jobs I started listening to free-form “college” radio. I began volunteering as a DJ at a community station in Durham, NC, and LOVED it. After a few very happy years there, exploring all kinds of genres, I noticed a job posting on the bulletin board: the classical station one town over looking for an announcer. Something clicked in my brain: “I love radio and I love classical music. I wonder if they’ll hire me?” They did. Answering that job notice was one of the best decisions of my life.

Do you remember your first time on air? What was it like? 
The first time I was on the air as a volunteer at the community station, it was absolutely no big deal.  That station had a broadcast radius of about 10 square blocks and my first air-shift was from 2a-5a. I figured no one was listening! But the first time on the air as a professional, classical radio host? That was TERRIFYING. I remember putting my headphones on as I watched the timer on the CD player count down to zero, and my heart began to race. The only thing I remember is that the composer I was announcing was Richard Wagner. Everything else is a blur.

Do you do anything special to keep your voice in shape for radio?
Not really, though I have learned that keeping a humidifier running in the house really helps. And when I start to feel that tickle in the back of my throat indicating an oncoming cold, I immediately pop one of my favorite cough drops, made by a company in Beaverton: Golden Lotus Lung & Throat Drops. They’re amazing!

You’ve done interviews with many people in the classical community over the years. Anyone you’d still like to interview?
I would love to interview Jordi Savall, the Spanish viol player. He’s a major figure in the world of early music, and I’m utterly captivated by his drive to continually unearth Medieval and Renaissance music. Also, from his photos, it appears he has very kind eyes.

For many years there’s been concern about the aging of classical music audiences. Do you think that classical music can connect with younger people?
Absolutely! It’s just a shame that it’s becoming more difficult for young people to discover classical music in their schools. The thing that really helped propel me into a life of music was participating in school music programs – making music with my peers. It’s an incredibly rich, bonding experience that I wish for all humans, young and old.

What have you discovered about young musicians since you started On Deck?
I’ve learned that kids love being a part of something bigger than themselves. That they deeply enjoy creating something with their peers. And I’ve learned that they’re not interested in thinking of music in firmly delineated genres – that for them, the term “classical music” has morphed into something that also includes fiddling, beat-box and electronics. I can’t wait to see where this generation takes us!

You also host Divaville on KMHD, which features jazz vocalists from the 1920s-1960s. Are there any similarities between classical and jazz formats?
Generally speaking, I think that classical and jazz work on similar parts of the brain. They are both complex musical forms, with dense chords and fast-moving progressions. Divaville, though, really highlights great old tunes, with simple lyrics and delightful turns of phrase. Those classic songs performed by those legendary voices – Ella, Frank, Louis – well, I never get tired of hearing the artistry of those musicians.

What is the last concert you attended that really blew you away?
Oh goodness, there is so much going on in this town that I feel like I have a new favorite every week!  One of the most memorable, though, was Third Angle New Music Ensemble’s program “In the Dark.” They performed –in utter darkness at the OMSI planetarium—Georg Hass’ String Quartet No.3. That experience was, for me, as much about the experience of attending a concert blind as it was about the music itself.

What are some of your favorite composers or pieces?
Until recently I would have answered that my favorite composers are the Romantics (the ones who tended to write great French horn parts!) – Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Mahler. (OK, well Mahler is still on that list.)  But these days I can’t get enough Baroque music. The math and buoyancy of Bach and Vivaldi kick-start my brain in a really delightful way.

What is some of your favorite Non-Classical music?
I adore old jazz vocalists, of course. But I also am a HUGE Talking Heads fan. Don’t get me started.

What do you do when you aren’t at the station? 
I see as many cultural events as possible, and I try to get out to explore the Pacific Northwest whenever I can. I love hiking and camping and just taking long, winding road trips to the far reaches of the state.

What excites you most about All Classical’s impending move to the Hampton Opera Building?
At our current location we have been lacking a performance space, and I can’t wait to invite music-makers into our new facilities to share their art with the world!

Andrea Murray talks about how she first got into radio and tells us about some of her favorite artists and composers:

What was your first job?

McDonald’s.

How did you get into radio?

There may be two answers to this one. 1)  My dad got me and my sister a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder when we were little.  We used to spend a lot of time pretending we were on the radio, and creating skits that were pretty much plagiarized straight from the pages of Mad Magazine. 2) I volunteered at my first real radio station, playing new wave and punk rock records for my college campus.

Where did you grow up? What radio stations did you listen to as a kid?

I guess I spent most of my formative years in St. Louis.  I don’t remember particular stations, but I remember that before the internet came along, I liked to listen to stations in other cities and countries on a shortwave radio.  My parents introduced us to classic radio dramas and comedy, and we listened to recordings of a lot of those too.

Do you remember your first time on air? 

I remembering feeling something like, “Oh, wow.  Everything makes sense now.”  For me, being on air feels more natural than real life, somehow.  I’m not saying that’s a healthy thing, but there you have it.

Before coming to Portland, you worked at WETA in Washington DC, what did you do there? 

I produced arts features, was a substitute classical announcer, and was host and producer of a weekly arts magazine program.

What is a typical workday for you now?

Preparing for my on-air shift; producing interviews with local artists for Northwest Previews; doing the final mix of this week’s The Score.  At the moment, I’m working on a 3-part audio documentary that will be hosted by Edmund Stone about the evolution of symphonic film music.  At lunchtime, I go home and let my dog, Louie, out for a quick walk.

What do you think differentiates the nighttime broadcasts from the daytime broadcasts?

I think the intimacy between audience and announcer is even more pronounced in the overnight hours.  Yes, it’s daytime for our overseas listeners, and some local folks are working the third shift, while others are natural night owls. But many of my listeners are awake reluctantly – plagued by insomnia, or worry, or illness.  I try to provide a sense of ease and continuity for them.  I’m trying to be a good companion – polite, reassuring, pleasant – rather than a Radio Personality.

How did you get interested in Classical music? Do you play any instruments?

Music was a big part of my early life. I was extremely lucky to have parents who could afford to take us to the occasional concert, and give us music lessons.  I took piano beginning in first grade, then later took flute and classical guitar.  I consider myself to be a musical person, but not really a musician per se.

What are some of your favorite episodes of The Score?

My favorite so far has been the one about the music for the old b-grade horror films from England’s Hammer Studios. I’m a huge fan of classic monster films, so this was especially fun for me.

What is some of your favorite Classical music?

Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Poulenc, Arvo Part, Osvaldo Golijov, lots more.

What is some of your favorite Non-Classical music?

Nina Simone; Neko Case; Bjork; PJ Harvey; Sweet Honey in The Rock. I would give anything to be able to sing like Mavis Staples. My favorite local songwriter is Rachel Taylor Brown.

What do you do when you aren’t at the station? 

Listen to music. Write poems. Volunteer at the Humane Society. I’m currently practicing ear training with an Android app I stumbled upon. And I nap like a champ.

I spoke with John Pitman about his first time on the radio, how he first got into classical music, and the particulars of being All Classical’s Music Director.

What was All Classical like 30 years ago?

Well, it was a very simple setup thirty years ago compared to what we have now. A very small staff, and a lot less equipment. We didn’t even have a studio at the very beginning; we were just out in a room. It was sort of like, if you went down the halls here, where the rack machines are and all that noise, and just sat there for eight hours, that’s what it was like. It was noisy. There were a lot of distractions and, because we’re in a high school and KBPS AM, which we were affiliated with at the time, has a broadcast course, every 40 to 45 minutes a troupe of students would come and go. Those were the kind of things that went on all day. And then a few months after that they built an FM booth. And we were there from ‘83 to ‘92. So just about the first nine years of the station was in this converted classroom.

And what did you do?

At the very beginning, I was not on the air; that didn’t happen until about three years later. I was playing the tape recorded programs that we had. And we had a lot, many many more than we do now. We were much more reliant on outside material to fill our broadcast hours.

Do you remember your first time on air?

I do actually. What I remember most is waiting to leave my house. I was about twenty years old and still living at home. I didn’t drive yet, so my mom would drive me down to the station every day. It was the first day where I was going to have a really significant amount of time on the air. I was quite nervous about it, but I had all my music selected and I can remember sitting in the living room and feeling like ‘I think we need to go now.’ So my mom drove me down here and I had to wait around for a while before I finally went on the air. It was very intense. I think it was like, if you have ever performed on stage before, unless you have no nerves at all, you get this kind of sense of time standing still. In one sense it seems like you’re there forever and in another sense it just flies by. I can’t really explain what it’s like, but it certainly doesn’t feel like time is passing in a normal sense when you’re on the air.

What kind of feedback did you get?

In order to get on the air, you have to make a recording as though you were on the air. Fortunately, you can just go into a studio and make an aircheck, as it’s called. I had already done that, handed it in, got some feedback from the program director, and he gave me one or two tips. One of them was don’t over-pronounce the names and the other was just basically don’t over-elaborate your explanations of what’s going on.

Did you have a ‘Radio Voice’?

Oh yeah, I think so. I think it was very different from what it is now and very different from my conversational voice. Back then you went by most of the announcers that you tended to hear, either the program director, or broadcasters from other networks. By and large, it was very formal. It wasn’t really as conversational as it is now. It was very professional, but very formulaic. There was a very particular way you went about saying whose piece it was and who performed it.

Do you think it’s better to be conversational?

I do. It’s easier for the listeners to approach the music in the first place. And that’s what we want them to do; we want them to connect to the music. It’s nice that they connect to us, and it’s nice to hear from them in emails, and from postings on Facebook, and meeting them, no doubt about that. But we’re there to connect them primarily to this great music, so that they’ll appreciate it, and love it, as much as we do.

Growing up in Portland, do you remember what radio stations you listened to?

I actually didn’t listen to the radio that much as a kid. It was coming to Benson and finding out from a couple of friends that a) there was a radio station here and b) there was a radio station class that you could take here, that got me more interested in radio. Then in 1983 I graduated and was working part-time on the AM station and they said there’s an FM station going on in August and would I be interested in continuing on and working there. So after two years in the class and three months working on the radio, the radio bug had definitely bitten me. And I immediately said yes, absolutely.

So what do you do now, as music director?

I receive the latest releases from all the different classical labels, and I do what I call “auditioning” them, deciding, first of all, is this music we want to play on the air, is it performed well, and is the recording up to our standards. The other part of the job, is going back into the existing library and finding things that we’re not yet playing on the air. I know a lot of what we have on the shelves, but there are thousands of CDs that I still have never listened to.

So you’re the Decider?

Yeah, that’s it in a nutshell; I decide what goes on the air. But I don’t have total autonomy. This is a collaborative effort with John Burk, our program director. He has developed a very clear vision of the sound of the station, so working with the set of ideas that he has actually informs my decision about what to recommend to add to the playlist.

Do the other hosts ever give recommendations?

Yeah, all the time. Because they’re interviewing visiting artists, or in the case of Christa Wessel, receiving local recordings, they’ll recommend from time to time something that they’ve come across. They’ll say, you know, ‘give this a listen.’

What’s the best part of working here?

Getting to listen to all that music!

How did you get into Classical music?

I credit my dad. He was a serviceman in World War II. He went into the service loving Glen Miller and the big bands, Boogie-woogie and things like that – popular music. A fellow serviceman was into classical music, which got my dad into classical music. And after that he just plunged head long into classical music for the next couple of decades. The only group that ever distracted him was the Beatles. He was crazy about The Beatles from the time they hit the scene until they broke up, and then it seems like once they broke up, he wasn’t interested in any other pop music, he just went back to classical. My dad played me Beethoven, Mozart, and Brahms records, and he also took me to my first concerts. My first Oregon Symphony concert was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and my first opera was The Barber of Seville.

So it was actually my dad and my next door neighbor, an Italian American who loved opera and had old 78 RPM records. He would put these records on and play for us these singers – I mean, Caruso and Gigli and these golden age singers. So by the time I got into KBPS, I knew who Toscanini was, I knew who Caruso was, and how to say some of these names. And I understood the form, too. I understood that there were four movements in the symphony, and three movements in the concerto.

But you never studied music?

Not ever seriously, no. I took clarinet for part of a year around sixth grade, but didn’t stick with it. My dad tried to teach me piano. We had a lot of fun at the piano, but I didn’t get very far. Finally, in the mid 90s, after I had been at the station for some time and had kind of settled into a routine, I thought, well I’m kind of interested in learning a new instrument. Tania Thompson had started taking cello lessons, she was our original live announcer, and she recommended a couple of guys who might be good teachers. I chose Jerry Bobbe and took lessons for about three years. I kind of plateaued. I still have the cello with some vain hopes of getting back into it, but other interests diverged me from that.

I gained a huge amount of respect and appreciation for real musicians, serious musicians, almost from the first time I drew the bow across the strings. I thought, oh my gosh, I can’t believe how hard this is. I hadn’t even done anything yet and it was hard! That was a really good learning experience for me because now I feel like I can listen to music and have a better appreciation and understanding of what it’s like to learn the language of the music, and stick with it. And also an appreciation for people who have musical talent.

If you weren’t working at All Classical, where would you be?

Well, it’s a very good question. I majored in electronics here at Benson and up until I got the job in radio, I thought, well, it will be something in electronics but I don’t really know what it will be. Maybe it will be, you know, soldering circuit boards or something like that. I didn’t really have a clear idea then what it was going to be.

What is your favorite Non-Classical Music?

The Beatles, thanks to my dad. I went through a phase in the early 90s, my last foray into what was then the music everyone was listening to, and that would be the Seattle grunge scene – Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and those guys. But then when Kurt Cobain died, I kind of lost interest after that. I love jazz, the jazz of the 40s, primarily. I appreciate Miles Davis. I think Duke Ellington is a genius. And I like world music. I like music of different cultures. Latin American music is a big favorite of mine.

So no Top 40?

Okay, in the 80s, my formative years, I was listening to, you know, the Eurythmics, Duran Duran, and stuff back then.

What is your favorite Classical music, if you had to choose?

My favorite? Mozart. Even before you’d finish your sentence it was Mozart. Orchestra wise, I’d be happy with anything by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, or The Academy of St Martin in the Fields. I never get tired of listening to those orchestras. I could also go for a long time listening to Beethoven and never get tired of him.

Do you have a favorite era of recordings or conductors?

I’m continually interested in what the latest conductors are bringing out. There are a lot of really dynamic, young conductors right now. I’m really happy that we have conductors right now who aren’t just the Americans, the British, and the Europeans. I’m happy to see South American conductors. I’m really happy to see women conductors, not just getting attention for the novelty that they are women, but because they truly are good conductors – JoAnn Falleta, Marin Alsop, a couple of examples.

And, finally, what is your dream Jeopardy Category?

Classical Music, of course.

And, embarrassingly, Star Wars…something else from my formative years.