These Are Busy Days...

Joe Hardtke

It's been a bit quiet at the Blog Without Borders lately. It's not due to laziness, I assure you.

When I'm not producing the sound of Here on Earth, I assist in recording other programs and special features for our parent network, Wisconsin Public Radio. Well, imagine my delight when I learned I was tapped to record Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra when they played the Sentry Theater in Stevens Point. That news came back in August. In the past two weeks I spent nearly every free moment preparing for this huge event.

On Tuesday night, I packed a 28-channel mixing console, scores of microphones and miles of cable into a van and drove two hours north to Stevens Point. On Wednesday, while Jean was talking with the Sugar Creek Morland Project, I was lugging gear backstage at the Sentry and putting together a remote studio. When the curtain went up at 7:30 p.m., my hands were on the faders, working very carefully to capture a terrific performance by Wynton and his band.

Since getting back to Madison on Thursday morning, I've listened to the concert twice in it's entirety. I must say I'm quite happy with how it turned out. The plan is to air the complete show in the next few weeks. No date has been scheduled yet, but I can tell you it will air through our sister stations on the WPR News and Classical Network. I'll try to give you a heads up when the date is announced.

Back Here on Earth, what a show today, huh? I never, ever could have imagined us doing a show on eating moose. But, hey, that's the magic of this program: To take you places you've never been where people do things you've never experienced.

And to make it all feel more human.

One more thing about today's show: I'm often asked, "Where did you get that piece of sound??" My most common answer these days: YouTube. Without a doubt, it is the pop culture repository. You can find anything on YouTube. Today we aired an excerpt from an old school 1964 Woody Allen routine on moose. As a treat, here's the complete routine, courtesy of my favorite aforementioned video utopia.



See (hear) you next week...