WYCC/20’s two hour special about Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy premiering Friday, April 18 highlights the PBS station’s launch of a major music series that continues the station’s commitment to original music programming.
“WYCC Presents a Special Evening with Buddy Guy,” is Friday’s 8-10 p.m. show that was taped at Buddy Guy’s Legends Club in the South Loop, in front of an SRO audience. Greg King wrote and produced and Ricardo Islas directed.
“A Special Evening” is the prelude to an even bigger production – the station’s 12-episode, hourlong concert series, “Buddy Guy’s Legends Presents the Chicago Blues,” slated to debut this fall. Islas produced and directed and Mina Adibpour was associate producer.
Special “Buddy Guy’s Legends” concert performances were taped on weekends starting last January at Guy’s club and concluded last week. The concerts are performed by mostly local blues artists with some out-of-town guest performers.
“One of the concerts we taped for the series stars 15-year old blues guitar prodigy Quinn Sullivan, who Buddy said he would pass the torch to, and another concert was his daughter’s blues band,” relates Islas who produced and directed the series.
The shows are 45 minutes of music and 10 minutes of mini-doc interstitial segments on the lives of the blues players produced by Islas and associate producer Mina Adibpour.
All 12 “Buddy Guy Legends” episodes are being edited by the station’s Eryn Walanka and David Pellenz. “A Special Evening with Buddy Guy” was edited by Esau Melendez.
“Buddy Guy Legends” series is another in WYCC/20’s commitment to producing original music performances, the only Chicago station currently doing so.
In addition to such performances as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Emmy-winning Chicago Sinfonietta, last year Ch. 20 presented “Musicology,” a 12-part series on world music in partnership with the Old Town School of Folk Music.
