AM1160 heads for cyberspace

Sample: Newsletter Excerpt

AM1160 heads for cyberspace!

Limp Bizkit says, in one of its songs, that radio is dead. Sorry, boys, not us! We’re alive and well, thank you very much, and we’re about to make our debut on the Internet.

Thanks to a partnership with Live365.com, we’ll soon be streaming all our great music 24/7. And that means we’ll no longer be limited by the reach of our tower in East Cobb County. Whether you’re in Douglasville, Georgia, or Paris, France, you’ll be able to hear greats like Sydney Bechet, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob and Ray, The Beatles, The Supremes, Charlie Parker, Dave Brubeck, Luciano Pavarotti, and the rest, any time day or night.

Live365.com, which streams a diverse array of stations both professional and amateur, allows listeners to tune in for free with any common Internet audio player, including Windows Media, iTunes, Winamp, or MusicMatch. It also offers two players of its own; one is free, and the other provides subscribers with sophisticated programming capabilities.

“We feel that Live365.com is a good fit for us,” says Lynne Rhys-Jones, AM1160’s marketing development coordinator. “It offers our listeners, and us, the greatest flexibility in choosing format and quality. It also provides a community of like-minded listeners – people who look beyond the fare offered by most commercial radio stations.”

AM1160 expects to begin streaming on July 8.

Artist Profile: Will Scruggs

Up-and-comer brings smooth touch to local jazz scene

The problem with musicians’ biographies is that they only tell about a third of the story. Will Scruggs’ bio, for example, is full of the accolades you’d expect for musicians of his stature. We’ll tell you what they are in a minute; but first, always first, must be the music. After all, fine pedigrees are sometimes assigned to mediocre musicians.

Will, who has recorded two albums with Atlanta jazz/funk band Cadillac Jones, is no mediocre talent. Effortlessly, it seems, he transforms single notes into emotions, and strings of emotions into stories. And he does it in a way that’s accessible to a broad audience, without being the slightest bit pedestrian.

Listen to the album he recently released with Jazz Fellowship and you’ll see what we mean. It’s impossible to escape the loneliness of High Road; the tenderness of O Lamb, the moodiness of Antithesis. And mellow, forward-moving Beersheba – the song with which our listeners may be most familiar – has all the earmarks of a classic. The album not only highlights Will’s own performance genius, but also his talent for choosing outstanding jazz musicians: Daniel Clay (guitar), Jose Marcano (percussion), Ali Barr (djembe), Gary Kurz (guitar), Tom Young (bass), and Damien Lewis (drums).

So do we care a whit about Will’s credentials? Well, they certainly bear witness to his talent: Will, who is an Atlanta native, began playing saxophone at an early age. By the end of high school Scruggs was first chair baritone sax in the 1998 Honor Band of America. In 2001, he was named the best college jazz musician in Georgia and Alabama. He was the first student at Emory to graduate with highest honors in jazz performance. He’s learned from the best and has, among other prestigious gigs, been a guest soloist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. He also, we hasten to add, performs with station-owner Joe Weber.

Impressive credentials for a musician so young, wouldn’t you say? But why listen to us? Go hear him for yourself. That’ll give you all the credentials you need.

Visit Will Scruggs at www.willscruggs.com for information about coming appearances. Hear Will, along with other great artists, on AM1160.

Programming Notes

AM1160 offers a warm welcome to Shai Robkin, host of Boker Tov. . . Atlanta! The show, which airs every Sunday morning from 10 to 11, will feature an eclectic mix of Jewish and Israeli music interspersed with interviews, book reviews, and other information of interest to the Jewish community. The show brings a diversity of programming that ranges from Torah study to Yiddish to Klezmer to news and music of Israel – and you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it! We hope that it will become a staple of our Sunday morning programming for years to come.