By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent Media
Mary Claire Murphy remembers as a young child sitting at the bottom of the family’s staircase next to the piano mesmerized by the music played by one of her older sisters.
She tried dance lessons and drawing classes as creative outlets, but it wasn’t until she was learning to play the piano when she was 8 years old that she discovered the pure joy of music.
Murphy, who grew up with seven brothers and sisters on the family farm northwest of Bowling Green, earned two music degrees, taught music in the classroom and gave private piano lessons full time. Even then, she had no idea that her career would take on a new note in 2022.
In September, she was hired as an on-air radio host and content producer for WGTE Public Media in Toledo. Being a radio host wasn’t a job she ever considered, even though during her lessons she would often provide interesting facts about composers or give some context before she played the songs, her mother reminded her.
With nearly four months under her belt, Murphy said the transition has been smooth; however, that hasn’t always been the case.
Playing piano was a love she developed at an early age, but when she went to college at Xavier University in Cincinnati, she didn’t have a clear sense of a career direction. She spent the first year exploring different options from environmental science and Spanish to graphic design.
“I wasn’t enrolled in any music classes, but I found myself at every study break looking for the nearest piano to play,” she said. That prompted her to take a one-credit piano lesson for fun, and then she enrolled in choir for fun.
“I ended up loving it. So slowly I started adding more and more music classes and eventually I thought, “This is sticking with me’ I feel like maybe this is my major.” She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a concentration in piano performance and composition in 2017.
After graduating from Xavier, she returned to Bowling Green and split her time between teaching private piano lessons and general music classes for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade at St. Augustine Catholic School in Napoleon. She also was a youth minister for some local churches.
“The variety was nice, but I felt like I wanted to pursue composition further after it had piqued my interest at Xavier,” she said. She was accepted into Bowling Green State University’s master’s program in music composition, where she studied composition and was a teaching assistant in music theory.
She graduated in May 2020 after defending her master’s thesis in a virtual format because of the pandemic. “It was a strange way to end the program, but we made it work,” she said.
Teaching class piano, general music and choir at St. Ursula in Toledo proved to be interesting in the environment fraught with COVID regulations. “We couldn’t actually sing in choir, so we were brainstorming ideas of what could do in choir while we couldn’t sing. It was interesting, creative and fun,” she said.
After that experience Murphy decided she preferred teaching private lessons more than teaching groups. “I was keeping an eye on other opportunities in the area to help fill in some of the times because most of my students can only have lessons after school,” Murphy said. “What can I do in the mornings when people aren’t able to come here?” she questioned.
When she saw the WGTE posting, she thought her experience with music software and computers would be a plus. Murphy never expected the station to ask her to be an on-air host.
“It was very daunting at first, but my supervisor said, ‘when you are on the air, just think about it as a conversation. That’s helped me a lot,” she said.
She is live on-air from 9 to 11 a.m. with the classics and after her morning shift, she records the evening (7 to 8 p.m.) and overnight (midnight to 4 a.m.) classics slots.
“I have time throughout the day to prepare my thoughts on what I want to say about the different pieces that I’m sharing. When I’m on the air, I’ll talk about the title and the composer, the ensemble, any soloists. I try to share a few little fun facts here and there about the son or the composer or just something that gives a little context to the music as they listen to it,” she said.
She credits her music education for giving her a solid foundation for doing the radio job. “There are a lot of names I’ve seen and played before, but I also like to research and fact check before talking about a song or a composer,” she said.
“Linda Taylor, my first teacher, was the one who was really instrumental in instilling my passion for music and piano, but I saw it as a hobby. My teachers in college helped me realize this could be part of my career,” Murphy said.
In graduate school, despite her concern that she would run out of ideas to compose, her professors affirmed that creativity is ongoing. “I realized, as long as you are engaging with life, there is so much to write about and explore, you’re never going to run out of ideas.”
Though she is classically trained and loves classical composers such as Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann, she also appreciates various genres and eras of music. “I know people have different preferences about what they like to hear, so I like to try to hone in on something special about each of the different pieces. There’s always something interesting to tell.”
As she gains more experience, Murphy looks forward to expanding her repertoire at the station. In addition to the music hosting, she will ease into some podcast work as well.
One of the biggest surprises for Murphy is the level of interaction the on-air hosts have with listeners. They try to keep an open line of communication through email and when they go out in public.
“I knew WGTE had a large following, but it’s an even bigger network than I thought,” she said. “I didn’t realize how active our listeners really are, but it’s really nice to hear from people who share some of the same passion for music and the arts.”
