Communique: Off Topic, Ivywild and an Invite for You

Friends,

It’s hard to imagine spring in the midst of winter, but we wanted to give you an update on what’s happening here at the public radio bunkhouse in the coming months.

Off Topic hosted by Steven Hayward, Professor of English, and Katherine Giuffre, Professor of Sociology at CC, will launch Friday, March 15th at 7pm, with the first episode called Death in the Digital Age, production by Craig Richardson and Jake Brownell at the Tim Gill Center for Public Media. Have you ever considered your Facebook page as your tombstone? You might after this show! It features talks with some of Colorado College’s and the region’s foremost thinkers and innovators.  It’s an unprecedented collaboration between KRCC and Colorado College Faculty and we know that it will be deeply satisfying for all of you lifelong learners, especially if you like to laugh!  Be listening for upcoming topics. Here’s what Professor Hayward has to say about the show: “The intention of the show, it’s to constellate ideas through witty, vibrant conversation and to provide a space for Kathy and myself to explore issues and ideas in greater depth and from a perspective often absent from the popular media. Sometimes to get the whole story, you need to go off topic, which is something that the show is not afraid to do. Which is what the show is all about. Quite often, in this digitized, fragmentary world, offtopic is the most topical, the most relevant place to be.”

Our remote studio at the Ivywild performance space is underway.  Speaking of Ivywild, let’s clear up some confusion about the performance space.  We’re not moving there; we’re building a satellite studio.  KRCC’s Program Director Jeff Bieri will have more to say about that later in the communiqué.

KRCC’s Spring 2013 membership drive begins in April, and to introduce you to the space and give you a chance to see what we’ve been doing, we’re inviting everyone to stop by Ivywild on April 20^th to tour the space, enjoy some live music and celebrate Earth Day with KRCC.  Join now at www.joinkrcc.org.

Here’s more from Jeff:

The  KRCC Ivywild Performance Space and Studio will provide KRCC the opportunity to share more of what we have already been broadcasting on the radio to live audiences….

Up to now, Vicky Gregor, (KRCC’s Music Director and Morning Music Host), and myself have had the occasion to invite world class musicians into the KRCC studios for live interviews and performances – definitely a treat for the handful of employees at KRCC who happen to be on hand for these visits…but now we will be able to include many more music enthusiasts in the audience during these live radio broadcasts.   Our hope is that we will be able to have these intimate conversations and performances in front of audiences at Ivywild all while broadcasting to our larger listening audience in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico in real time – the local community will become a part of the live radio broadcast.

The concept of public radio stations having performance spaces that allow for recording and broadcast is not new – eTown in Boulder has just renovated a nearly 100 year old church and built the eTown Hall, and WXPN in Philadelphia has opened a second World Café performance space in the beautifully renovated Queens Theater in Delaware.  These are just two high profile examples of the many public broadcast facilities nationwide that are including community in their broadcast endeavors.

The Ivywild space will provide a hip venue for local musicians, poets, and performers to share their work.  We have already lined up two local cd release parties, a blues recording project to benefit the Pikes Peak Blues Community, and a couple of national solo acts to play the venue in a regular concert setting.  Our partnerships with Jacobs Audio, Bristol Brewing, and Blue Star Restaurant, are making this vision possible. Bristol Brewing Company will hold liquor licenses, produce micro brews on site, and have a bar adjacent to the venue, Blue Star restaurant will have restaurant, bakery and coffee house facilities, Chris Jacobs of Jacobs Audio in Boulder will be outfitting the venue with a state of the art sound system, and KRCC will be outfitting the recording and broadcast studio.

Jeff Bieri
KRCC Program Director

As always, we welcome your feedback. delaney(at)krcc.org / jeff(at)krcc.org

 
Delaney Utterback
General Manager
KRCC-FM