The Big Broadcast Returns for 19th Year
Mount Holyoke College Students Recreate 1940s Radio Show
If it’s March, it must be time for The Big Broadcast, the popular annual event that, this year, will be held Saturday, March 9 in Chapin Auditorium on the campus of Mount Holyoke College. There will be two performances – at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
The Big Broadcast is a unique recreation of a 1940s-style radio show, complete with news, commercials, popular songs, and a radio play in the detective serial style. Mount Holyoke has designated the yearly concert as a Signature Event.
Sponsors are Mount Holyoke College, 22News, Loomis Communities, NEPM, PRIME magazine, NEPM 88.5, and The Republican
22News meteorologist Brian Lapis returns to The Big Broadcast in his role as the show’s emcee “Fred Kelley.” Mark Gionfriddo, director of the Jazz Ensembles of MHC, is the show’s creative director.
Gionfriddo noted that this year marks the 25th anniversary season of the jazz program at Mount Holyoke. The Big Broadcast is a production of the college’s Big Band, Jazz Vocal, and Chamber Jazz ensembles.
“There’s really nothing else like it,” Gionfriddo said about The Big Broadcast. Part concert, part theater, the show is produced by students with Gionfriddo playing the role of “Matt Morgan,” who conducts the fictional WJAZ Big Band and is Fred Kelley’s musical sidekick.
This year’s selections include “The American Patrol” from the Glenn Miller Orchestra; Rodgers & Hart’s “This Can’t Be Love”; “Romberg & Hammerstein’s “Lover, Come Back to Me”; the iconic Gene Krupa drum feature “Sing Sing Sing;” and Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” as popularized by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters.
Tickets are available locally at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley and online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-big-broadcast-2024-2pm-show-tickets-800425964607. More information is available on the Facebook page of the Jazz Ensembles of Mount Holyoke College and on their web page at www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/music/big-broadcast.