Daniel Karcher

Sunday Morning Harmony Host

Albert Camus once said, "one's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those one or two great and simple things, in which their heart first opened."

"To me," says Dan Karcher, host of Sunday Morning Harmony and WBGO's Fill-In Announcer, "this applies to both the true jazz musician, and listener."

"Today, like any other day, we may wake up empty and frightened. If you take the time to open a door to the study and read, take down a musical instrument as well. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Try to imagine the first jazz musician. They weren't playing for an audience, or a market, or working on their next recording, or touring with their show, or working on their image. They were playing out of need, out of their need for the music."

Like many of WBGO's staff, jazz has always been in Karcher's life. "Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Charlie Parker -- they've been in my life since I was a child," says Karcher. "At a time when my peers were digging into 'pop,' I was digging into Louis 'Pops' Armstrong. "What is that you're listening to?" they would ask, "it doesn't make any sense!" to which I would reply, "certainly it makes sense, think of it as having taken leave of it -- in order to hang onto it!"

Karcher's radio broadcasting career began on England's Radio BHN on a program entitled American Heart Beat, a countdown of America's Top 40.

"That... was a struggle. With a title such as that, one might expect the format to be jazz. After all, is jazz not the true American heart-beat?" asks Karcher, "however, the program was pre-formatted, saving me from having to select the music to air. I had very little knowledge about pop-culture music. I was listening to ther likes of Keith Jarrett, Miles Davis, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan and so forth. You want an American heart beat? Listen to Bud Powell, Coleman Hawkins, or Shelly Manne. They're the perfect example of the American Heart Beat."

Returning to the USA, he then reunited with radio once again at Philadelphia's jazz station WRTI for a brief time, then to Princeton University's WPRB. He then came to WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM, originally as host of Weekend Jazz After Hours and currently as WBGO's full time Fill-In Announcer and host of Sunday Morning Harmony.

Off air, Karcher is a film designer (www.bluedaniel.com), in production with various filmmakers such as Haxan Films, Gear Head Pictures, Warner Bros, Lion’s Gate Films, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and others. Feature works include The Blair Witch Project (Haxan / Lion's Gate), Unrest (Lion’s Gate), The Bros. (Lion’s Gate), Believers (Warner Bros.), Altered (Haxan / Focus) and Family Guy (Fox) in addition to several others. Currently Karcher is in development on “The Air I Breathe” with Forest Whitaker, Kevin Bacon, Andy Garcia, Brendan Fraser and Sarah Michelle Gellar to be released this Spring.

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