Radio/Podcast Producer

The very first rock billboard arrived on the strip fifty years ago, just in time for the Summer of Love. It was the brainchild of Elektra Records executive Jac Holzman to introduce his newest musical acquisition – The Doors – by hanging their four faces high above Sunset Boulevard. Other labels soon followed suit, turning the strip into an outdoor psychedelic art gallery. And in 1969, one rock billboard was famously at the center of a crime that went unsolved for over four decades: What happened to Paul McCartney’s Missing Head? Photographer Robert Landau, Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger and the man behind the “heist of the century” share their stories about the heyday of rock n’ roll billboards. Photo by Robert Landau

Singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson is and always was a musician's musician. In Los Angeles, a chorus of Harry-philes hope to use the power of music to sing their hero into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Aired on NPR's All Things Considered, October 2015

When Grammy-winning jazz musician Esperanza Spalding conceived her newest album “Emily’s D+ Evolution,” she saw "little vignettes" in her head. To help bring her vision to life onstage, she turned to an old family friend - theater director Will Weigler, whom she first met as a child growing up in Portland, Oregon. The finished stage production isn’t a musical, in the traditional sense, and it’s not exactly a straight concert either - it’s more like an illustrated song cycle. Spalding talks about the process of turning music into theater. KPCC's 'The Frame, March 2016

Julio Gosdinksi came to Los Angeles from Lima, Peru when he was twelve, and grew up without a father. He found his first job in high school, helping out on weekends at the historic Griffith Park Merry-go-Round. He also found a father figure -- in its owner, Warren Deasy. When Deasy passed away in 2011, he left his half of the carousel to his young protégé. Now, Gosdinski runs a stable of sixty-six vintage carousel horses, “all jumpers,” as he tells us. What’s it like to own your own carousel? Anny Celsi visits the park to find out.

The Sunset Strip is the musical heartbeat of Los Angeles, attracting a continuous stream of hopeful musicians. But one Brazilian composer took things a step further and made his home there - literally. For 10 days, Manuel Lima ate, slept and improvised on the piano in a 10-by-10-foot cube. Radio piece produced for DW's Worldlink program, August 2016.

VOCO sings folk music - but it’s not the usual coffeehouse fare. It’s music that celebrates everyday life, steeped in generations of tradition, from far-off, tucked-away corners of the globe. Places where songs are passed down, learned by heart, rather than written down. Moira Smiley brings this music to life one cool spring evening on a hillside in Los Angeles.

"When you give a kid a harmonica, you don't expect him to dedicate his life to it." says Joe Powers. But that's exactly what he's done. Powers is a world-renowned concert harmonica player, but his heart is in Buenos Aires...and tango. This piece aired on World Link and on Prime Time Radio.