KPLU

Thank you for supporting KPLU during the 2012 Valentine's Day Roses Campaign. Your support has been overwhelming and our campaign was a HUGE success! Roses are no longer available for purchase at KPLU, but you are welcome to renew or join as a KPLU member all year long.

Guest feature by Mónica Guzmán of Geekwire:

On Friday, Dec. 2 at Seattle Children’s Hospital, 11-year-old Braydon Hutchison was crying. It wasn’t because of his leukemia, which kept him quarantined, or the nausea and vomiting that had made him sick all day. A musician he’d never met was playing a concert across town in his honor, calling out his name to the crowd. Braydon could see the live stream on his laptop from his hospital bed, and it finally moved him to tears.

It was the best thing that ever happened to him in the hospital, Braydon would later say. “It made me feel really good.”

Sign up today, there are only 4 spots left for this trip!

Join fellow KPLU listeners and General Manager Paul Stankavich & Joey Cohn Director of Content April 26 - May 8, 2012 for a world-class culturally rich jazz adventure to the Baltic States and historic Saint Petersburg!

Highlights to this year's KPLU Travel Club journey include:  The highly-acclaimed Kaunas International Jazz Festival, historic walks in the charming capitals of Vilnius and Riga, bistro dining, outings to villages and visits to stunning National parks.

KPLU staff share their observations of wandering through the snow storm in Seattle.

An anonymous humanitarian expert with years in the field writes about the things more “ordinary people” should understand about humanitarian aid:

"There’s always some woman at the Christmas party who, once she discovers what I do for a living, wants to talk my ear off about some awful idea she has about how to help poor children in El Salvador or Cambodia."

Read more on Humanosphere.

Here are the top 10 blues CDs of 2011, according to KPLU's John Kessler, Host of “All Blues.”

KPLU's long-time signal to West Seattle at 88.1 FM may encounter interference due to a new radio station broadcasting on that same frequency beginning Monday, December 19.

Because of terrain and distance, it's possible that some KPLU listeners in West Seattle will still be able to hear the station, but others may experience some signal disruption.

At the present time, KPLU is unable to do anything about the interference. However, the station has a license application in to the FCC to move its West Seattle signal to a new frequency.

Each week in a new feature on our jazz blog – Groove Notes – we'll tell you about a few of the songs added to KPLU’s "All That Jazz" rotation by our music director Nick Francis.

This week’s picks are three tracks from Sarah Vaughan’s first long-play album “In Hi-Fi.”

Read more on Groove Notes.

On the heels of a nearly month-long celebration of his 70th birthday at the Blue Note in New York City (which included performances with ten different bands and 30 musicians) legendary jazz pianist Chick Corea will offer a rare opportunity for radio listeners tomorrow afternoon on KPLU.

At 12:15 p.m. Pacific Time Corea will be joining Kevin Kniestedt in the KPLU Seattle performance studio for a live interview and solo piano performance. This is a real treat for us as Corea so rarely offers performances of this type.

Read more on Groove Notes.

On the heels of a nearly month-long celebration of his 70th birthday at the Blue Note in New York City (which included performances with ten different bands and 30 musicians) legendary jazz pianist Chick Corea will offer a rare opportunity for radio listeners tomorrow afternoon on KPLU.

At 12:15 p.m. Pacific Time Corea will be joining Kevin Kniestedt in the KPLU Seattle performance studio for a live interview and solo piano performance. This is a real treat for us as Corea so rarely offers performances of this type.

Read more on Groove Notes.

Seattle is connected to Rwanda in a number of ways, beginning with the country’s role as a major producer of high quality coffee beans for Starbucks and Costco. A number of local humanitarian organizations, as well as social enterprise business ventures, are active there.

KPLU and Humanosphere blogger Tom Paulson is headed to Rwanda along with a dozen or so other journalists sponsored by the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University. For the next two weeks, he’ll be reporting on the trip and also posting stories on a number of Seattle projects at work there that have helped make Rwanda — despite its horrific recent past history — into what many see as an African success story.

Read more on Humanosphere.

KPLU’s Kevin Kniestedt kicks off his preview of the Earshot Jazz Festival today by interviewing executive director of Earshot, John Gilbreath.

“There is so much that wants to be done and needs to be done and should be done, and this is our attempt to do as much of it as we can,” Gilbreath said.

Leading up to opening night, we will be posting posts and questions as part of a preview to the festival, and during the festival we will be bringing you reviews, updates, and most importantly, your feedback.

Read more at Groove Notes.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn says he's being patient with the Occupy Seattle protesters camping out for a second week in the downtown Westlake Park.

Occupy Seattle issued its own statement Tuesday saying it will stage a march Saturday in coordination with the Occupy Wall Street protest against corporate power.

SEATTLE — Seattle's self-style superhero Phoenix Jones wrote on his Facebook page that he was back on patrol Monday night.

He had to wear a backup costume after police seized his black and yellow outfit Sunday when they arrested him for investigation of assault. He is accused of using pepper spray on four people who were dancing after leaving a nightclub.

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