Lauren Rico

WQXR Host

Lauren Rico. (Courtesy photo.)

Lauren Rico: Classical Music Reanimator

Lauren Rico was going to be principal French horn of the New York Philharmonic. That was her plan, anyway. She didn’t come from a particularly musical family — the kind in which the matriarch knows her “Pachelbel’s Canon” from her “Taco Bell Canon” — but she loved classical music nonetheless. She had picked up the horn as a middle schooler at summer band camp, not because she felt strongly about the instrument, but because it was the only one left that would fit in her bicycle basket after all the daintier options had been claimed. Nevertheless, she embraced the horn.

While pursuing her studies, Lauren started taking radio gigs to pay the bills. She started as a board operator at her college station earning a whopping $3.85 / hour, but she was soon getting more consistent broadcasting work — and the pay was getting better, too. What’s more, Lauren was realizing just how much she really loved radio. A natural storyteller, she enjoys taking kernels of ideas and spinning them into riveting narratives with three-dimensional characters and captivating story lines. On the radio, Lauren relates her tales in miniature; a self-described classical music reanimator, she demystifies the music and humanizes its composers.

Outside of the studio, Lauren crafts narratives on a grander scale. The author of nine works of steamy, contemporary fiction, she writes on planes and trains and at Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Panera (but only when she needs to get unstuck), weaving classical music into the bedrock of each of her works.

Lauren Rico

WQXR Host

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