WUFT Host Interviews

“I think Americans are in a place right now where we are perhaps, perhaps, more willing – at least I think our listeners are more willing – to learn from others experiences and the situations that people find themselves in in corners of the world; may be quite relevant to us now.”

Assistant Professor of Piano at the UF School of Music, Jasmin Arakawa, stopped by the WUFT Classic studios to preview the 2018 University of Florida International Piano Festival and discuss the "terrifyingly beautiful" Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata. Click to see and hear the performance.

About playing the music of the '50s and '60s, Billy says, “It doesn’t matter what color you are. It doesn’t matter what age you are. You look out there, man, and they’re all digging it and that just says a lot to me. That just says a lot about the music, its longevity, and how important it is.”

“When we were kids growing up, there were a lot of people playing around my dad all the time and some of those people were Ramblin' Jack Elliott, The Dillards, Hoyt Axton and Pete Seeger, of course, but those were all people in our lives who were family,” says Guthrie. “They influenced me as a human, and then their music was just around, all the time…. That was just the soundtrack to us growing up.”

“You learn a lot of lessons along the way when you’re out there trying to navigate your life.”

“The two questions I got when I returned [were], ‘Are you going to run for office?’ and ‘Are you going to play music?’ And so the answers were easy: no and yes.”

I just want to keep playing music the rest of my life. My Grandpa and Aunt Bobbie have been playin’ on the road for over 45 years together. It’s all I’ve known that they do. They just go out and play songs and they call it work.

“Florida is the strangest state. It’s the butt of everyone’s joke. But at the same time, it’s not a single thing. It’s a multitude of stories layered on top of one another.”