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Don G. Amrine
Host, Bluegrass Ramble
Don Amrine has been involved with Bluegrass Ramble since early 1982, and says his love for bluegrass music was mostly influenced by "Flatt & Scruggs" in the 1960s. In the '70s and '80s, Amrine's favorites included the "Country Gentlemen" (Jim and Jesse) and Doyle Lawson. I am still fascinated by the harmony singing and precision picking style of these groups," he says. Since 1990, Amrine has been singing and playing guitar/bass in a traditional bluegrass band. Presently, he works as a contract consulting engineer and owns Fairfield Specialty Co. in Lancaster, OH. When not in the WOSU studio or on the job, Amrine spends time with his wife Susan and children D. Michael and Bridget. His favorite pastimes include woodworking and fishing.
Fred Andrle (WOSU NPR News)
Host, Open Line with Fred Andrle
Fred Andrle is host and executive producer of WOSU NPR News' daily public affairs talk program, Open Line. A Buffalo, New York, native, Fred is a graduate of Canisius College of Buffalo and he holds a master's degree in Communication from Stanford University. Fred began work for the WOSU stations on the TV side, where he produced and hosted a weekly talk show, Speakeasy. He journeyed to China to produce a documentary about Chinese artists and scholars, as well as a performance piece highlighting the Beijing Acrobatic Company which aired nationally on PBS.
Fred has hosted Open Line since 1988. The program features local, national and international guests in a call-in format that allows listeners to directly question journalists, social reformers, government officials, artists, and more.
Rich Baker
Host, Bluegrass Ramble
Rich Baker has been a co-host of Bluegrass Ramble since October 1986. Born in Akron, OH, he received his bachelors degree in journalism from Ohio University. His radio experience includes a brief stay as a country DJ at WOUB in Athens (while in college), and a radio show on WFVF-FM in Columbus called the Bluegrass Hot Top Hits Countdown. "I like finding new bluegrass groups and vocalists with a sound firmly rooted in traditional bluegrass," he says. "Bands that bring a fresh approach and a modem sound but don't stray too far from traditional bluegrass." When he's not listening to bluegrass, Baker is the director of corporate communications for Metatec Corporation in Dublin.
Tom Borgerding (WOSU NPR News)
WOSU NPR News Managing Editor, Reporter
Tom Borgerding has worked in both commercial and public radio newsrooms. He joined WOSU in August of 1985 and currently serves as managing editor and reporter. He has reported stories for regional and national networks. A native of St. Louis, he has strong Midwest tendencies. He lives in northeast Franklin County with his wife, Vicki.
Tim Eby
Radio Manager
Tim Eby has been the Radio Manager for WOSU since June 2004. Prior to his move to Columbus, Eby was Station Manager at WVPE Public Radio in South Bend, Indiana for more than 21 years. He has also served as the President of Public Radio In Mid-America (PRIMA), the country's largest public radio regional organization, for four years and has served on numerous task forces and panels sponsored by NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Eby has been a member of the Board of Directors of National Public Radio since November 2002 and currently serves as its Chairman. Throughout his career, Eby has worked on behalf of numerous arts, cultural, and non-profit groups in his local community, including a four-year stint as the volunteer chairman of the Elkhart Jazz Festival. He currently sits as a member of the board of directors for the Jazz Arts Group and the Thurber House in Columbus. Tim notes, however, that his greatest achievements are convincing his wife Kathi to marry him in 1988, and - with Kathi - raising three beautiful daughters: Kelci (born in 1992), McKenzie (born in 1995), and Lindsey (born in 1999). Tim and his family reside in Powell.
Beverley Ervine (WOSU Classical Music)
Music Director
Music Director Beverley Ervine was born in Staunton, Virginia, in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley and came to WOSU in 1986. Ervine earned her Bachelors degree in Music Education from East Carolina University, her Masters in Music History and Literature at The Ohio State University, and her ABD for Ph.D. in Music History and Literature at OSU. In 1976 she was awarded a bassoon scholarship to study with Leonard Sharrow, who played under Arturo Toscanini. She left a teaching career (including elementary and high/school band/classroom music, private students and undergraduate music courses at OSU) before joining the WOSU Radio family.
In February of 1997, Beverley was elected President of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio (AMPPR), a national organization representing public radio stations that feature music as a regular part of their program schedule. During her tenure as President, a position she held for 5 of her 8 years on AMPPR's Board of Directors, she successfully initiated many new programs such as announcer training workshops and scholarships for first-time attendees to AMPPR's annual conference. Likewise, she increased visibility for the organization by launching AMPPR's web site and building relationships with other national and international radio organizations, to include a future international classical music symposium with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which had to be delayed due to the post-world events of September 11, 2001.
During her "free time," Beverley serves as a member on the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra Artistic Committee where she reports on current classical music trends, repertoire, and rising young artists and composers, and she enjoys spending as much home and travel time as possible with her husband Boyce Lancaster, whom she met and married at the WOSU Stations.
Chet DeLong
Host, Bluegrass Ramble
Born in mountain country Kentucky, Chet DeLong has lived in central Ohio for 43 years and been part of WOSU's Bluegrass Ramble since 1990. He grew up listening to Farm and Fun Time on WCYB in Bristol, VA, featuring the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, and Bill Monroe. "I can't recall a time of not being in love with bluegrass music," he says. DeLong has promoted bluegrass shows since the 70s and has attended festivals in many parts of the country. A charter member of the Central Ohio Bluegrass Association, DeLong has performed in the "Plum Mountain Grass" band for many years. DeLong says he loves to play listener requests.
Sam Hendren (WOSU NPR News)
News Reporter
Reporter Sam Hendren brought more than two decades of experience to WOSU when he arrived in August of 2005. Born in Tennessee and raised in North Carolina, Hendren began his journalism career at the University of Alabama’s public radio station (also his alma mater). He’s reported extensively from across the Southern U.S., the inter-mountain West and the Great Plains states. His work has appeared on NPR, Marketplace, and the Voice of America. He served as executive producer of the environmental radio magazine High Plains News, based in Billings, MT, and was news director at public station KMUW, in Wichita, KS. Sam is the recipient of many national awards for journalistic excellence.
Boyce Lancaster (WOSU Classical Music)
Host, Boyce Lancaster and the Classics, Saturday on the Stage with Boyce Lancaster, Saturday at the Pops with Boyce Lancaster
Boyce was born in Lubbock, TX and grew up in Tulsa, OK. With relatives in Houston and San Antonio, however, there are many opportunities for regular trips back into the Lone Star State. His daughter lives there today, having recently moved to Texas, offering yet another reason to head back to longhorn country. He’s lived in Ohio, with a few side trips during college and early in his radio career, for over 20 years. Like his home state, Boyce is a colorful individual, and his speech is peppered with humor. He says that he was “born at a very early age to two wonderful people who should have known better. I began music lessons in third grade, changing from piano to clarinet in the fourth grade. Over the course of the next eight years, I wound up playing oboe, alto and bass clarinet, alto and baritone sax, and made a short disastrous attempt at the sousaphone.
“My college major was broadcasting (surprise, huh?). After stints at several radio stations early in my career, (as they say, town to town, up and down the dial), I came to WOSU in 1984, moving into the morning position in the spring of 1986. Many things have changed over the years, but the listener's love of good music and my enjoyment of getting it on the air remains the same.”
Christina Morgan (WOSU NPR News)
Host, WOSU NPR News All Things Considered
Christina is the local host and news anchor during WOSU NPR News' afternoon news magazine All Things Considered. Christina has been a part of the WOSU news team for more than two decades. She earned a BA in Journalism & English from Indiana University and an MA in Education from The Ohio State University.
Christopher Purdy (WOSU Classical Music)
Host, Arts Unscripted, Music in MidOhio, Ohio Arts Alive with Christopher Purdy, Serenata with Christopher Purdy
Christopher was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the American Revolution (“Paul Revere rode by my house; I wasn’t home, but my mother was!”). He studied music at Boston University and a Master in Arts Administration from New York University. Christopher is hoping to turn his graduate credits into a DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) in Opera Production at The Ohio State University. He is a pre-concert speaker for all classical-series concerts for the Columbus Symphony Orchestra (“if you don’t like me, don’t come early, because you can’t avoid me!”), the Vail Series at Denison University and Opera Columbus. In September, he will be doing a “Classical Music Workshop for Children” at Denison. Christopher designed and taught a class entitled “Listening to Voices” at OSU. (“I had a marvelous time, and two or three of those students have become like my children! Fortunately, I don’t have to pay their tuition!”) Purdy was a regular panelist for 20 years on the Chevron-Texaco Metropolitan Opera Quiz.
Purdy has Columbus ties: his father-in-law, Wayne Rittenhouse, was the football coach of Central and Northland High Schools in Columbus. He met his wife, Linda, while they were both working at a food kitchen in New York City. They married in 1989; their daughter was born in 1990, and the family moved to Columbus in 1991. They are still adjusting to the Midwestern lifestyle. A city boy, Purdy maintains that he would be happy to cement over his entire yard…“spare me the lawn mower and the weeds!” His favorite composers are Monteverdi and Bruchner. An accidental encounter with a beat-up recording of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" at the age of eight changed Purdy's direction from law school or the priesthood to one of classical music and public broadcasting. He was so captivated by the cover art, that he took the recording home, popped it on his battery-operated kiddy record player … and his life changed forever. He still has the recording.
John Rittmeyer (WOSU Classical Music)
Host, John Rittmeyer with the Classics; Symphony at 7
John grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and moved to Columbus to attend OSU where he double majored in English and Photography. He went on to acquire a Masters degree; John’s thesis centered upon the Canadian writer, Robertson Davies. Rittmeyer was drawn to Davies because of his psychological and spiritual themes—interests that have carried through in his music career. Learning to play the guitar in high school, John grew to love all kinds of music, rock ‘n roll first, and then classical music later. As a student, Rittmeyer would often turn on music while he was studying, and he found himself gravitating towards the music of particular eras he was studying. When he began to examine the nineteenth-century Romantic poets, for example, he would play Wagner and other musicians of the Romantic age. “Music has enhanced my experience of literature. The more you listen and the more you read, you begin to recognize the zeitgeist of the era—in different forms and media—and that’s fascinating. I've been getting paid to listen to classical music since 1987, and the experience of music has opened a whole new world of artistic expression to me.”
Marilyn Smith (WOSU NPR News)
Host, WOSU NPR News Morning Edition
Marilyn Smith is the local host of WOSU NPR News' Morning Edition (5am-9am weekdays). She began her career in Broadcast Journalism at WOSU as a graduate intern. Through the years, she has worked as a reporter and producer. She was one of the early hosts of a local hour of Morning Edition. She’s also hosted call-in programs during her years of service at WOSU. Marilyn and her husband have two children.
Mandie Trimble (WOSU NPR news)
News Reporter
Mandie began working at WOSU in August, 2005. A 2004 graduate of the University of Alabama, Mandie also worked as a general assignment reporter for The Daily Mountain Eagle in Jasper, AL, as well as Alabama Public Radio. Mandie came to really appreciate public radio as an undergraduate student studying television reporting. She began working as a student reporter and anchor for Alabama Public Radio just to gain some experience. But during her two years at APR, she decided public radio’s non-sensationalized style of reporting was the career choice for her. Mandie has won several national and state awards for her reporting.
Mike Thompson (WOSU NPR News)
Director, News and Public Affairs
Host, Columbus on the Record
Mike has worked for WOSU since 2001, gaining the position of news director in 2005.
A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, Mike earned a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism from Syracuse University and a Masters in Business Administration from Ohio State University.
Mike has worked in radio and television in Massachusetts and Ohio earning numerous awards for enterprise and investigative reporting. Mike and his wife Mary have twins – Madeleine and William.
Amy Juravich (WOSU NPR News)
Midday Host
Amy joined WOSU in September 2007. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA and graduated from Duquesne University in 2005 with a B.A. in journalism and a B.A. in English. It was during college that Amy came to appreciate the values of public radio when she worked as a student news reporter for WDUQ-FM (a Pittsburgh NPR news station). After college Amy moved to Tallahassee, Florida to work as a reporter for WFSU-FM and Florida Public Radio covering capital news for the state. Amy left Florida to marry her high school sweetheart Jonathan Juravich in December 2006. After arriving in Columbus, Amy worked briefly as an Associate Producer at NBC 4 before joining WOSU. Amy has won several journalism awards for her public radio reporting (back then her name was ‘Amy DiFiore’). In her free time, Amy enjoys spending time with Jon, eating out, going to the gym and traveling (she studied in Rome during college).
Julie Amacher
Classical Music Host
Julie Amacher’s desire to introduce others to great music is what led her to radio. She began her professional broadcast career at a station in Sun Prairie, Wisc. She went from rock ‘n’ roll to the Rocky Mountains, where she found her niche in public radio at KUNC in Greeley, Colo. Julie spent 13 years at KUNC, where she managed the announcers and their eclectic music format. During that time, she earned four national awards for best announcer. She joined Classical 24 in 1997.
Scott Blankenship
Classical Music Host
Scott Blankenship started his radio career in college when he began working as a volunteer at a local cable radio station, announcing alternative and new rock music. His love and appreciation of classical music began at public radio station KVNO in Omaha, where he spent 13 years in various on-air and management roles, five of those years as the morning drive-time host. Indications that radio was in his blood go back to age five, when he used a corkboard and a battered phonograph as a make-shift radio studio, his father's Air Force issue flashlight served as his "on air" light. In his spare time, Blankenship is an avid cyclist and amateur playwright with several produced scripts to his credit.
Bob Christiansen
Classical Music Host
A founding voice of Classical 24, Bob Christiansen has managed to combine his knowledge of classical music and history with a sharp wit and a talent for foreign languages into a 38-year radio career. While studying the ramifications of the “Time of Troubles” on the Grand Duchy of Moscow, he led a secret life as the evening man on the Northern Illinois University radio station. He teamed with Bill Morelock in 1987 to create the nationally syndicated Bob and Bill.
Jeff Esworthy
Classical Music Host
Jeff Esworthy has been the overnight host of Classical 24 since 1996. He’s a public radio veteran with more than 20 years behind the microphone, where he’s hosted everything from folk to jazz to progressive rock. A hobbyist musician and collector of instruments from around the world, Jeff has what he describes as a “passable” command of southern string-band music on fiddle and banjo, and he is a long-time student of the classical music of Northern India on instruments such as the sitar, sarangi and tabla.
Ward Jacobson
Classical Music Host
Ward Jacobson has enjoyed a radio career spanning over two decades as a morning show host and sportscaster, as well as producer/host of an interview program where he chatted up both local and national authors, musicians, politicians and newsmakers. He is also a past winner of the prestigious Marconi Award. Jacobson's love of classical music stems from a childhood influenced by his bass-baritone father and piano-teaching mother. While still a college student in Nebraska, he began singing with the Abendmusik Chorus and took part in concert tours to venues as varied as England’s Lincoln Cathedral, the Vatican, Salzburg Cathedral, Auschwitz and Moscow. When not singing, he works to develop his guitar-strumming repertoire.
Valerie Kahler
Classical Music Host
Valerie Kahler came to the Classical 24 team after more than a decade as a classical host and music director at KNAU in Flagstaff, Ariz. She holds a degree in cello performance and plays piano in self-defense, but feels most at home in front of a microphone—as your companion for an evening of classical music, or singing classic tunes in a club.
Gillian Martin
Classical Music Host
Gillian Martin was a music major at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale when her first classical radio career began. Moving from volunteer to student worker to part-time announcer to Music Director at WSIU-FM, she spent six years on-air there before leaving to pursue a graduate degree in theater. After several years of working in theater and arts administration, Gillian got back into broadcasting in 2005 when she joined Minnesota Public Radio's on-air staff part-time. She is delighted to be a part of Classical 24. In her off hours, Gillian thoroughly enjoys a good sing-along, is passionate about nonprofit bookkeeping, and loves to hear smart people debate big questions.
Mindy Ratner
Classical Music Host
Mindy Ratner began her career in public broadcasting following her graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, working first for the local public television station and then for Wisconsin Public Radio. She moved on to stations in Cincinnati and Philadelphia before joining Minnesota Public Radio in 1983. In 1998 and '99, Ratner took a leave of absence to work as a music host and producer for China Radio International in Beijing. Her spare time is devoted to international travel; folk, ballroom and contradancing; singing in the Minnesota Chorale; her two cats, and trying to stay ahead of the weeds in her garden.
Alison Young
Classical Music Host
Prior to joining Minnesota Public Radio, Young served as an assistant producer for KUHF-FM in Houston for "The Front Row" and was host for KUHF's "Sunday Afternoon Concert." She enjoyed a successful career as a concert flutist, performing as a guest with the Boston Symphony and with the Atlanta Symphony. An intrepid traveler, she has given recitals in the United States, Europe, South America and Asia while managing to climb a mountain or two in the process. She also served as the principal flutist with the Houston Ballet Orchestra. Young began her broadcast life at Houston Public Radio answering phones during fundraising campaigns. While an illness cut her performing career short, she made a vibrant artistic transition, making the natural move to broadcasting. She says, "the intellectual stimulation of speaking with dancers, writers, artists, actors and musicians is extremely rewarding." She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Southern California and a master’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music.
John Zech
Classical Music Host
John Zech got started in broadcasting as a news anchor at his high school’s closed-circuit television station (KRUD). While in school at St. Olaf College, his love of classical music earned him his first “real” radio experience at WCAL-FM. After a dozen years doing virtually everything there was to do at a small public radio station, John crossed over into the private sector, producing and voicing an audio reading program for a major educational publisher, managing multilingual translation projects for an international communications firm, and generally learning what it’s like to work for a living. Having seen the light, John returned to radio in 1992. After deciding his zen garden was too much of a headache, John looks for enlightenment on the tennis court and the billiard table instead.
Jennifer Hambrick (WOSU Classical Music)
Jennifer Hambrick joins WOSU 89.7 FM as a classical music host, Sundays at 1pm. A native of Columbus, Jennifer holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and studied flute performance at the Eastman School of Music, the Royal Academy of Music (London, England), and Northwestern University. Her doctoral research focused on aesthetics of genre in Hector Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette symphony. Jennifer has performed with a number of professional musical ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her journalism recently garnered the prestigious Simon Rockower Award for excellence in feature writing from the American Jewish Press Association. When not writing, performing, or broadcasting, Jennifer spends long hours at the yoga studio and the gym. “WOSU’s classical music broadcasts were integral to my early development as a classical musician, and I’m very excited to help bring classical music to a new generation of WOSU listeners.”
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  Join host Boyce Lancaster in a new hot spot where you can sample some the richest fare—the Amadeus Deli! Weekdays from noon to 1pm on WOSU 89.7, let Mozart and his contemporaries set the perfect soundtrack to your lunch hour. more... |
