Jazzing Up the Arts

Brannock then tends to her three cats and waters her plants. The 44-year-old then finishes the day with karate, swimming or aerobics.

During the day Brannock might be found bouncing around on a big blue toy ball that sits in the corner of her busy office at the UNC Center for Dramatic Arts.

But somewhere in between she manages to conduct a sizeable orchestra of artistic programs.

Although Brannock's official title is director of Arts Carolina, in reality she is Arts Carolina.

"When I started, Arts Carolina started," she said. "That's what I was recruited to do."

The fledgling program, founded last January when Brannock assumed her post, is an umbrella organization coordinating campus arts departments to produce collaborative programs.

"Arts Carolina is one-stop shopping for information about the arts at UNC," she said. "It's not here to duplicate what anybody else is doing, it's to help them do it better."

One thing Brannock has helped to do better is the Carolina Jazz Festival. Run solely by Jazz Studies Director James Ketch for 23 years, the program has grown into a monthlong series of exhibits, plays, concerts, lectures and discussions -- mostly on her watch.

She has initiated "Arts Carolina," a 16-page guide to campus arts events that comes out every semester.

Brannock's path to her current position dates all the way back to "age zero" when she started banging on her grandmother's piano. "When I was 8, she gave us her piano," she said. "I started taking piano lessons and never stopped."

She graduated from UNC in 1978 with a music education degree and went on to direct public school choral groups in Chatham and Pender counties.

But she was not ready to settle down. "It was a little lonely," she said, adding that she learned to fish in her free time.

Brannock's fishing career might have died, but only to be replaced by more prestigious jobs.

After earning a master's degree in public administration from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, she worked for the National Endowment for the Arts and several North Carolina-based arts councils before ending up at UNC. "I kind of made the transition from my own teaching to helping others facilitate that," she said.

Now, Brannock considers her ability to facilitate collaboration between people one of her main assets. "I think I have a knack for getting people together and taking them through a process of what they want to accomplish," she said.

But helping people accomplish their goals is no simple task. Brannock's eight- to 12-hour day begins when she checks her messages while enjoying Tension Tamer tea. Her daily tasks include publicizing events, attending meetings, updating calendars and raising funds.

What makes it all worth it?

Last Sunday's jazz concert at the Morehead Planetarium, she said.

"It was amazing, we turned 100 people away," she said. "This job is so much fun -- sitting in the Star Theater in Morehead Planetarium seeing so many people enjoy that performance."

Her long-term vision is to publicize the arts at UNC both locally and nationally. But in the meantime, Brannock will still be doing everything from answering phones to writing articles or even bouncing around on a big blue ball.

The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.