Jackson Free Press

Surrounded by stacks of CDs in her office at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Classical Music Director Karen Hearn looks for the perfect music to play on her radio show tonight. Yesterday it was Schubert's Mass in E Flat. Next time it might be Dohnányi's 2nd Symphony. Who knows?

"I love that nobody tells me what to play," Hearn says. The 26-year-old redheaded Baton Rouge native discovered her love for music when she started to play the violin at the age of 3, later moving on to voice and piano, and just "kept going."

Hearn earned two degrees from Louisiana State University: a bachelor of arts in voice and philosophy and a master's in choral conducting. From LSU, she moved on to volunteer at WRKF Public Radio in Baton Rouge and gave piano lessons before heading to Mississippi in August 2007. Her first job in Jackson was an unpaid intern position at MPB.

"I thought this here would be comparable to Baton Rouge, which is, like, the size of a dentist's office," Hearn remembers. "I didn't realize that MPB is the network for the state."

In her position, she started a "Saturday Afternoon Modern Classical Music" show, playing music that she describes as "sometimes pretty, sometimes really strange, but almost guaranteed to be something you have never heard before."

Her radio show brought Hearn her first contract position in October 2007. Last January, after the sudden departure of her predecessor, she became the classical music and public service director. Even though she was kind of thrown into her current position, Hearn found that knowing the music was enough to start with, picking up the technical part of the job while doing it. And it was not like she took the job completely unprepared:

"I was the cantor in two Catholic churches for seven years, so I was used to saying things very clearly and slowly: 'Please. Turn. To. Number 3-4-2.'"

Hearn is now responsible for picking out music for and hosting three different radio shows, as well as putting together an arts calendar. She also writes a blog on MPB's Web site. Yet, she is far from being overwhelmed by her on-air presence. "I pretend nobody is listening," she says.

In her free time, Hearn likes to go out to eat with friends and dance to Irish songs at Fenian's. "There is a lot of stuff to do in Jackson that I didn't realize when I first got here," she says.

And, of course, she likes to listen to more music. Winking from across her desk with her sparkling blue eyes, Hearn removes a red CD from a stack. "I can't wait 'til you leave so I can listen to John Adams," she says.