Brenda Barnes
L.A.’s Classical Radio Maven Doesn’t Need to Turn Up the Volume. In Fact, KUSC’s President Is Just Fine With Silence.
On our way over to happy hour drinks from her downtown office, Brenda Barnes marvels at the glut of construction projects on South Hill Street. “Change,” she tells me, “is in the DNA of L.A.”
It’s nothing I haven’t heard before, but it sounds weightier coming from the president of nonprofit public radio station KUSC-FM; classical music, after all, stridently resists change. The bar Barnes has chosen, The Stocking Frame, looks brand-new, with high ceilings, polished wood floors, and a studiously hip vibe. There’s even a plant growing out of a …