This weekend, Brian Satterwhite presents his 500th edition of his weekly radio program, Film Score Focus. In the ten years Satterwhite has been producing and hosting KMFA’s dedicated outlet for music from the movies, he’s rarely repeated an episode.

“I take a lot of pride in doing the show,” he says. “I’ve just always been excited to create a new program every week. To repeat something just seems kind of lazy or lame.”

Satterwhite enjoys plumbing the depths of styles and genres that film music can generate. In terms of traditional music programming for radio, a station or show will generally pick one particular style or genre and broadcast only that one thing; Satterwhite proudly breaks all of the rules. He enjoys the variety of sounds and styles that film music has to offer.

“That’s the thing about film music that a lot of people don’t understand,” he says. “Part of what makes film music so great is its eclecticism. If the film dictates a score for tuba and kazoo, written in a jazz style or whatever, there’s nothing off limits. That’s the beauty of it.”

Brian has been expanding the notion of what it means to be eclectic since he took over producing the program at the request of founding host and producer Stephen Aechternacht back in 2005.

Aechternact, who first conceived the show all the way back in 1999, had produced nearly four hundred of the shows' programs himself before turning over the full-time production duties to Satterwhite. He says he always knew he would have a limited run as host and producer of the show.

“I just wanted to get the show established as part of KMFA's musical mix,” says Aechternacht. “ From the outset, I was looking for someone to take the show to the next level, and for a longer period of time.”

Looking to expand his own horizons, Aechternacht eventually found his way to an informal course on film music that Satterwhite was teaching through the University of Texas. They quickly got to be friends and Aechternacht began inviting Brian to regularly join him on the program as a co-host.

Although Brian had done that a dozen or so times before taking on the show himself, he admits that he didn’t have any other previous experience in radio.

“I was real nervous at first. It was hard for me to relax. I feel like it took me two years to learn the ropes and to learn how to do a radio show well. I can’t listen to programs from those first couple of years,” he says.

Whatever it sounded like back then, Satterwhite has most definitely found his own voice and his own unique approach in the intervening years.

As he has from the beginning, Satterwhite juggles the production of the program with his own career as a composer of film music. He moved to Austin in 1998 in order to pursue scoring films after having attended the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston.

“I came to Austin specifically for the film industry. About 90% of the people I went to school with all went to Los Angeles, but after considering it for a year, I picked Austin. The more I looked into the city, the more I realized it was the place that would be a fit for me and my goals.”

He says that the majority of his day is spent working on scoring various film projects. He’s also a husband and a father of two boys, and has been married to his wife, an elementary school music teacher, for the past 18 years. His boys are ages 12 and 7, and he says his oldest just started playing bassoon in his middle school band.

“I thought he would end up playing something like percussion, but after trying out a bunch of instruments, he picked bassoon! It seems to fit his personality and I’m actually excited for him. I’m raising a bassoon player!”

For his 500th episode (airing on KMFA on Friday, November 13th at 8PM), Satterwhite will offer a two-hour extended edition of the show which will feature a retrospective look at the program’s history, candid interviews from Austin’s film community, and fan giveaways. Aechternacht will join him in the first hour as a guest host.

You could win a selection of film score CDs specially curated by composer, producer, and host Brian Satterwhite. Just email giveaways@kmfa.org and tell us your name and favorite film score.