Feature Profile Story

“Oh my gosh I just saw a big hawk!” exclaims a fascinated Robin Rilette as she looks out the window of the third floor of the Murrow building at Washington State University. “I don’t see them on campus very often. How interesting. What if it was an owl?” She then picks up right where she left off, explaining one of her favorite parts about being music director for Northwest Public Radio (NWPR).

Rilette loves hosting concerts and other events around the Northwest. Last month she judged a master-class in Kennewick with world-renowned Broadway singer, Franc D'Ambrosio. “All these places with symphonies and chamber groups and things like that, a lot of them want someone to come and I’m the only classical music person really…It’s energizing and it also lets me meet people. They all know who I am, they feel like they know me. A lot of people say, ‘I feel like you’re my friend,’ but I don’t know them.” She describes the sensation of being at a party and feeling recognized by her voice, which is heard all around the Northwest, “People will start looking at me weird. Now I’ve kind of picked up on it. They try not to look at me but they are looking at me and if I see that at a party I’ll go up to them and say, ‘I don’t think we’ve met, I’m Robin.’ I can tell that they’re listening to me and wondering…which is a good thing.”

NWPR consists of 13 radio towers and 13 translators across Washington, Idaho and Oregon. “We’ve gone from being a small station to a geographical entity that’s covering most of the state of Washington,” explains Rilette. “We’re soon putting in a station on June 21, this is super-duper big news. We’re taking over a station that broadcasts into Tacoma and Olympia. So, in one station we are going to actually double the potential size of our audience.”

And just who is this audience? Rilette discussed public radio’s reputation as having a liberal slant. She cited a National Public Radio (NPR) survey that asked listeners if they were more conservative or liberal. According to Rilette, it was shown that in fact there is a fairly even split among listeners who consider themselves politically left leaning and those who consider themselves right leaning. Rilette noted, “If we get complaints they’re usually about 50/50, ‘You’re too liberal,’ 50% say, ‘You’re too conservative.’ So to me, that is a real indication that NPR is doing a pretty good job of staying as neutral as they can.”

Tim Meinig, a colleague of Rilette’s at NWPR describes her as an integral part of the station. She, along with Dan Maher provide the only shows produced locally and that gives NWPR a unique feel. “Her job as music director is something that nobody else can do,” he said.

Rilette remains humble however. She said she still has a hard time identifying classical composers even though she has been playing them for 20 years. “Someone like Vivaldi or Bach, they write hundreds and hundreds of pieces…I mean really. I think that’s why my listeners like me, because they’re kind of in the same boat as I am. I’m not some PhD in music, I don’t present myself as a know-it-all. I’m just somebody else who likes music, and here’s some interesting information that I came across.’”

As Rilette talks about her blog her eyes wander to the window overlooking the rolling Pullman hills and she interrupts herself, “Oh…you know what? There is that bird. It is a red tailed hawk! There he goes…that is just cool.”