Dear Fellow KMFA Listeners,
It’s a new year, and KMFA has new goals in mind for improving our service to YOU! One major goal is to expand the programming content on our website. In the past, if you were listening to one of our syndicated programs, like the BP Chicago Symphony Orchestra Broadcast, and you heard something you liked and wanted to know what it was, that information was not readily available. Many of you called and wrote to let us know that you would like to see that content on our website. We listened, and we heard, and we are working on making that new content a reality!
KMFA has only nine full-time staff members, and each of us has a full plate at all times! As KMFA’s Music Director, much of my time is spent scheduling the music you hear during the day, listening to new CDs that arrive at the station, and fulfilling database and library management tasks. In order to take on a new responsibility like the one outlined above, I needed to free up some time. It is in the spirit of improving the overall quality of KMFA’s product to our listeners that I have decided to voluntarily relinquish my position of host of Banquet Music.
I’ve been hosting this program since 2005, and I have sincerely enjoyed having dinner with you each weekday evening! Not to worry — I will continue to host Ancient Voices with great pleasure (and let me take this opportunity to remind you of Ancient Voices’ new time: Sundays at 9am and 4pm), and I’ll also be hosting a new KMFA program that will showcase new releases (called, appropriately enough, What’s New?). Jeffrey Blair, Dianne Donovan, Rich Upton and I will host the show on a rotating schedule. I’ll host the first installment on Saturday, January 9th at 9pm. I hope you’ll join me then!
Best regards,
Sara Hessel
KMFA Music Director
local austin culture 
Hi Sara: I know change & innovation must happen in any org., however…I MISS YOU @ DINNER TIME…Banquet Music. It was great!
you all do a wonderful job & it is my pleasure to support you’all & be a part of what you call ‘the Master’s Circle’. jbw
Your show was one of my high points of the day! I’ll miss you. DC
That’s too bad, but understandable. My wife and I have enjoyed many a quiet evening and meal with you in the background.
Dear Sara Hessel,
We are absolutely DEVASTATED to have lost the beauty and joy of banquet music you have hosted so splendidly for the last few years. You perhaps have no idea what a balm, what a relief, what a splendor having your program fill the room as we dine has been — helping us unwind from the battles of the day. There was little talk, except for your most cogent comments on the offerings you selected for each evening. What is in its place does not compare. Performance Today has too much talk. He is very knowledgeable but for dinner we are in are parasympathetic nervous system mode — which means we are not in a school room learning mood (which we definitely are at other times of the day).
May we suggest that you take all the recorded versions of the shows you have done since 2005 and play them from 6 to 8 p.m. Your show not only enriches dinner-time atmosphere for Classical music minded Austinites, it comforts and nurtures those that suffer long commutes, stop and go traffic before they reach home.
Please reconsider somehow bringing Banquet Music back!
Sincerely,
Bob and Noreen
Sara,
I want you to know how impressed I am with your work as Music Director. I’m past sixty now and I’ve listened to and played classical music since my early teens. You still manage to find wonderful new pieces that I’ve never heard before. I also appreciate how much contemporary music you manage to slip into the mix without presenting anything that will scare away the less adventurous listeners.
Thank you and keep up the good work!
Stuart
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