Dennis Bartel

Dennis Bartel is a thirty-year veteran broadcaster, having served most recently for fourteen years at WGMS in Washington, D.C., where he was at various times evening host, morning host, and opera host, assuming that role from legendary music critic Paul Hume upon his retirement. During his tenure in Washington he received the highest local honor for radio three times.

Previously Mr. Bartel served as founding program director and announcer at WJHU in Baltimore.  He began his broadcast career in his native Los Angeles as morning host at KUSC for five years in the late seventies, where he also produced a celebrated thirteen-part series of hour-long documentaries on California writers. In the summer of 1984, Mr. Bartel returned to KUSC to produce the station’s nightly coverage of the Olympic Arts Festival.

He is also an accomplished writer, having published hundreds of articles, stories and essays with such enterprises as Harper’s, Time-Life, Doubleday, and others, on a rainbow of subjects ranging from Israel to Parisian cemeteries; a pagan farm to maple syrup farming; a celebrated abortion trial to homelessness; and Sikh ashrams to contract killers, for which he won a press club award for investigative journalism.  He has also written extensively on music, serving as a national columnist and writing for several major orchestras.  His book of stories Voyeurs was named Best Short Stories of 2007 (bhoutlook.us).

Dennis and his wife Erin are parents to four young children.

His weekday morning program is heard on Classical KUSC from 5 to 9 am, Monday through Friday.