Dear Listeners,

April is an exciting month filled with station changes, both regarding our new administration and an exciting lineup of special broadcasts. If you look to the left, you may notice some new names on the board, as well as some names shifting from department directors to our executive board, and so on. I’m Solène and it’s a pleasure to formally introduce myself. You may have called in to one of my Classical Department shows—right now, Thursday afternoon’s Extended Technique, or previously a Mahler-focused Cereal Music on Tuesday mornings (which I hope to begin again this summer)—or spoken with me during a fund drive. Regardless, I’m delighted to begin my tenure and continue WKCR’s longlasting legacy.

We have a multitude of special broadcasts this month: five all-day birthday broadcasts and a fourteen-hour Soul Festival hosted by the American Department. We’ll celebrate so many of the greats’ birthdays—Charles Mingus, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and a newly introduced broadcast for the legendary Tito Puente. Elsewhere in On Air, you can find a tender interview with Ella Presiado, outgoing Publicity Director, and McKenna Roberts, former Head Engineer and American Department Director, friends who describe the rich relationships they have fostered through college radio. Following this, Program Director Charlie Kusiel King’s reflection on music at St. John the Divine and programmer Jack Serpick’s record store musings make this a rather literary and introspective edition. I encourage you to spend some time with these pieces—I cannot express how much commitment and care goes into keeping the written world of KCR alive. On Air Managing Editor McCartney Garb writes more on this later—we would be nothing without them and the On Air team.