Backstage Pass
Thursday, August 20 - 10:00pm
on WKAR-HD and WKAR-23
"Backstage Pass" Features "Professors of Jazz" Encore
Backstage Pass returns for summer night music with an encore of MSU Professors of Jazz. The series combines performance footage recorded in WKAR’s Studio A with behind-the-scenes interview and rehearsal footage.
Led by Rodney Whittaker and featuring Sunny Wilkinson on vocals, the group includes Joe Gloss (guitar), T.S. Galloway (trombone), Randy Gillespie (drums), Diego Rivera (tenor saxophone), Rick Roe (piano) and includes many original compositions, including "A Heart Enflamed and a Soul Enchanted," performed by Whitaker and Wilkinson.
Backstage Pass also marks a unique partnership with two MSU units – MSU’s College of Music and the university’s Telecommunications, Information Studies and Media (TISM) department of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences.
In a way, Backstage Passis a return to WKAR’s earlier broadcast roots – televised concerts that introduced viewers to such artists as Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, and Gil Shaham. WKAR’s executive producer Tim Zeko said he and WKAR station/program manager Kent Wieland created the series to better “utilize our studio production capability and to showcase some of the best music our community has to offer. This community extends beyond the MSU campus throughout mid-Michigan and we hope will eventually include some outstate talent as well.”
“We have been able to produce occasional performance programs over the past ten years,” he adds, “but we wanted to do more by leveraging some of our greatest production assets – our studios and our dedicated staff.”
published: January 21, 2009
