Kimberly Junod
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).
Kimberly's interest in radio started from her love of music and sound. After graduating high school in Sydney, Australia, she spent several months learning multi-track recording and mixing at Eclipse Recording Studios in Sydney. Returning to the United States to study for her B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania, she got her start in radio with a student internship at WXPN (the station that produces World Cafe). After graduating Magna Cum Laude with dual majors in Communications and Music, she became WXPN's line producer, engineering the Peabody Award-winning show, Kids Corner. In 2004, Kimberly also earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania and in 2021 completed a Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology. Outside of work, she has a passion: dragon boating, having represented the U.S. in the World Dragon Boat Championships and first International Dragon Boat Federation World Cup. She currently serves on the board of the United States Dragon Boat Federation (representing the Eastern Regional Dragon Boat Association) and is a part of the USDBF's High Performance Committee.
-
After a spot on the Italian version of The X Factor didn't help her as much as she'd hoped, the singer-songwriter took matters into her own hands. -
Six Bars Jail, a small club located just outside of Florence, Italy, was founded in 2006. Sergio Bianco is one of the venue's founders, who named the club after a song by guitarist Giovanni Unterberger. -
Marco Contestabile makes psychedelic blues music influenced by Tarquinia, where he grew up. -
There are few film composers who have created music as iconic as Ennio Morricone. Some of his most memorable soundtracks were recorded at Forum Studios, the recording studio he co-founded in 1969 alongside Armando Trovajoli, Luis Bacalov and Piero Piccioni. -
When we first started researching bands for our Sense of Place: Rome series, the very first one that jumped out was Weird Bloom. Their music is psychedelic and catchy, and it kind of sounds like T. rex. -
Four Flies Records founder Pier de Sanctis explains what makes these increasingly rare soundtracks so special. -
The Italian pianist and composer returns to his childhood in Turin on his latest album, The Summer Portraits. -
The Milan-based musician draws on both her mother's Italian side of the family and her father's Palestinian heritage. -
World Cafe correspondent John Morrison digs into how the Philadelphia group updated the old-school R&B vocal group archetype for the hip-hop generation. -
Even if you don't immediately recognize Amy Allen by name, you've definitely heard her songs. The songwriter talks about writing chart-toppers for stars like Sabrina Carpenter, plus releasing her own, self-titled album.
