That's me on the left -- I'm the violist in the Anvil Trio.
I'm also a...
I used to play here Saturday nights. You know, "round-the-piano singalongs." It was fun. Call The Lodge at (785) 594 3900
Here's a list of upcoming performances --
Some of my musical journeys...
I worked as a classical DJ in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the mid-1980's.
My first radio job! 1980
Here's the job I have now
I worked for KXTR for nine years
I taught strings here at Seabury
FOREST GREEN: 1997 -- current
In 1992-1994 I was the Orchestra/Strings Director at Kansas City Kansas Community College. Probably the best job I ever had.
The Award-Winning ANVIL TRIO
Wedding Music Ideas
Angelfire Home Pages
I played in a Celtic group named AD ASTRA with Pamela Bruner, 1995-1996
Here's where I take my harp lessons!
Like many people, I didn't start music until I was in Fourth Grade. Hutchinson had a good music program and although the school thought I should play clarinet, our family was broke at the time and we could not afford an instrument. My father's father, Glenn D. Brown, had an old violin that had been out at the farm for decades -- I got to have it! It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I named it Thorcrist and I really believed that it had magical powers. And it did.
"When the E is not silver and the A is not golden
The days of Thorcrist have become olden."
And the way I remembered the strings at first was:
Glenn D. Alias: Elf.
Fourth, Fifth and Sixth grades for me revolved around this new-found instrument. Finally -- there was something I could do.
Then in 7th grade Grandpa (after much family begging and hinting) gave our family a big old piano. I got to start piano lessons with Leota Anderson, the best teacher in town. And luckily she lived right across the street. A hard task-master, she MADE me a great pianist.
Within two years time, I was accompanying the Central Junior High School choir. Accompanying is a whole different creature. Talk about baptism of fire. I really mean it when I say that at this time I was experiencing the highest pressure I'd ever had in my life. People would assume I could play something on piano (because I handled violin so well, I guess) and they'd hand me some impossibly hard accompaniment and say "be able to play this for our church choir this Sunday." Non-musicians who'd hand me this stuff had no idea. So I would work and work and work, going over the same measure a thousand times -- until I got it. I never said no and I never gave up. I just had to do it. It never occurred to me to get tired. Or bored. Or to say no. It was a need to be needed.
"Cord, play the piano. That way, somebody will always want you." -- my Mom, Dorothy Melland
I went to Music Camp at KU every summer for five summers, and when I finally got up to KU as a real music major, I was shocked to discover that college was half as easy as Camp, ten times as expensive, and not as much fun. I stayed in college until I got my education, and until I got a fulltime job as a classical music announcer at commercial classical top-thirty market KXTR-FM in Kansas City.
Radio is my passion, my career, my bread and my bacon. But I never forget that it's MUSIC (violin, piano) that got me here. Otherwise I never would have wandered into KHCC-FM, the new NPR station at Hutch Juco in 1980, and asked for a job. They jumped on the musical background and within five months, at the age of 19, I was the Acting Music Director. Pretty big shoes to fill, since the vacating Music Director was Craig Curtis, who is now the Program Director/General Manager of WAMU-FM which is the public radio station in Washington DC, home of NPR. KANU is the best station I've worked for and I hope to retire from there. 
