Houston Public Radio’s Studio 3C is where the live and recorded performances that air on the station’s weekday afternoon arts magazine, “The Front Row” take place.
Musicians who have upcoming concerts in the Houston area appear as guests on The Frong Row, where they talk about and perform selections from their public events. Among the talented artists who have made music on “The Front Row” are nationally-recognized pianists Ruth Slenczynska and Jon Kimura Parker; the all-female a cappella medieval-music vocal quartet, Anonymous 4; Texas folksinger/songwriter, Bobby Bridger; and Houston-based jazz vocalist, Yvonne Washington.
Studio 3C’s perfect acoustic properties and its state-of-the-art, all-digital recording, processing and editing equipment (not to mention the station’s highly-skilled team of audio producers) make the installation ideal for recording projects. Houston Public Radio’s first Compact Disc production, “The KUHF Sessions,” was recorded in the Fall of 2001. It features University of Houston faculty artist Timothy Hester, who personally picked out the seven-foot American Steinway concert grand piano that graces the room; the instrument was bought with donations contributed by the station’s listeners. Houston classical guitarist Susan McDonald made her most recent CD, “The Phases of Eve,” featuring two of her own original compositions, in Studio 3C, and, in the summer of 2005, Houston Public Radio will produce a disc of chamber works from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the premiere project of the KUHF Chamber Players.
The Performance Studio and its audio facilities may also be rented by outside groups for recording projects; a number of amateur pianists, as well as singers associated with Houston Grand Opera, have made demonstration and audition tapes there.