Karen Hearn

non-specific Northern American, American Southern, Midwestern

Most of my experience comes from presenting classical music at Mississippi Public Broadcasting. My voice has also been used for several PSAs at WRKF in Baton Rouge, the Mississippi State University TV promo, a promotional video for the United Way of South Mississippi, a movie trailer for an independent film called Mean Parents Suck, an online gardening course for the National Gardening Club and countless promos, PSAs and imaging for the radio stations and television stations associated with Mississippi Public Broadcasting. I've also voiced the video presentation for the Governor's Awards for Excellence in the Arts and have hosted the annual GIVE Awards two years in a row. My formal training is in Classical Music. I have a Bachelor of the Arts in Music and Philosophy and a Master of Music--Choral Conducting from Louisiana State University. Studying voice (and watching cartoons) taught me how to listen critically to my own voice and to manipulate the sounds I can produce. At MPB, I have honed my skills in audio recording and production. I started as a lowly intern and within five months became the Classical Music Director. As such, I produce over 25 hours of content a week in a variety of topics including music, gardening and business. I have studied several languages including French, Japanese, German, Russian and Italian. I use an ElectroVoice RE27ND microphone and a Studer OnAir 2000 M2 board. I have an ISDN line through a Zephyr system and I use Adobe Audition to edit audio. I was the cantor for two Catholic churches in South Louisiana for seven years. This involved quite a bit of singing and speaking into a microphone with a warm, inviting voice to gently coax church-goers to participate in mass. I studied vocal anatomy in college so I am familiar with the biology involved in vocal production. I am highly experienced with writing for time constraints, having written scripts for promos and PSAs for MPB for four years.