Scott Burton, KTOO

The 29th annual Juneau Jazz and Classics festival kicks off tonight at Centennial Hall and runs through May 16. With multiple bands and venues it can be hard to know who to see and where to go, so I sat down with festival veteran Ken Leghorn for some pointers. He’s been to all 28 festivals.

“It’s just an incredibly enriching month between the concerts and the fact that if you’re not into jazz or classical music you can expose yourself to that whole side of music, and literally hear some of the best music in the country right here in Juneau,” Leghorn says.

Listen to the full interview with Ken Leghorn here.

Longtime Alaska musicians Sean Tracey and Nate May dropped into KTOO to play three tunes for a gracious staff audience on a Friday afternoon. Tracey’s songwriting has been described as “Psycho-Tonk” and “Ameribilly,” and May’s Telecaster playing is just plain tasty. In addition to this video, you can hear an extended interview with Tracey here.

Longtime Alaskan musician Sean Tracey is up from Austin, Texas for the Alaska Folk Festival. He dropped into KRNN and spoke with Scott Burton about why he loves the festival, and played the four songs that he will formally release on May 1. Click below to hear the interview and the world premier broadcast of “Steamroller,” “At Least We didn’t Have Kids,” “Don’t Make Me Wait” and “Looking on the Bright Side.”

Carl Hoffman is an honored guest at this year’s Alaska Folk Festival. He’s been playing bluegrass in the state since the pipeline days and has influenced countless musicians. Click below for an audio profile of Carl KTOO‘s Scott Burton wrote for APRN‘s AK radio program back in 2007.

Here’s our take on All Songs Considered’s Tiny Desk Concert. The 3-song performance was recorded at KTOO on Friday, April 3rd, 2015 in the new arts room still under construction. Learn more about Harrison B. at harrisonbmusic.com. Stay tuned for more concerts to come!

Maeva Ordaz is the Alaska state Poetry Out Loud champion for the second year in a row. Now in its 10th year, the competition begins in classrooms, goes school-wide, statewide and eventually culminates in Washington, D.C., for the national championship. Ordaz says the competition is fulfilling its mission to expose youth to great literature.

“Poetry Out Loud has had a big impact on schools in terms of getting people, teenagers especially, more involved in learning poems, reading them, analyzing them, and I think the program has been very successful in doing that,” she says.

On Tuesday, Ordaz competed against nine other Alaskan high school students who had memorized poetry from an anthology of more than 800 poems. Ordaz says the competition is also fulfilling its other goal of engendering confidence.

“Standing up in front of an audience of 100, 200 people and reciting—that was something that I hadn’t done before, so that was an excellent experience for me and it’s given me that confidence to go out whether I’m doing a poetry recitation or a speech or I’m debating,” says Ordaz.

Ordaz will join state champions from around the country for nationals in Washington, D.C., in late April.