Forecast for Colleen Coyle: raising awareness of animal-rescue charities

If WFAA/Channel 8 meteorologist Colleen Coyle weren’t doing TV weather, she’d be a photographer. She played violin in an orchestra for 10 years, and now she’s working on improving her guitar skills. And she has a dog and a cat, Luna and Lucy.

So being the master of ceremonies for Artists for Animals’ 2017 Concert for Kindness, which takes place Sunday at the Dallas City Performance Hall, kind of comes naturally to her. This will be Coyle’s second turn as emcee, after meeting Artists for Animals co-founders Teresa Berg and Erin Hannigan before last year’s event.

“When I met Teresa and Erin, I was just really blown away by what they were doing, and I told them that this event really pulled at all my heartstrings,” Coyle says during a phone interview. “I was in orchestra ... in middle school, high school and college, and the arts have a big impact for me. I love animals, and I love to be able to help out my furry friends here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”

Berg and Hannigan are artists themselves: Berg is a photographer, and Hannigan is principal oboe for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. They began working together a few years ago, using their talents to help raise money for animal-rescue charities in North Texas. This year’s Concert for Kindness will feature performances by Avant Chamber Ballet, Hannigan and other musicians from the Dallas Symphony and musicians from SMU.

Mary Alice Rich, a DFW violinist-composer, will debut her composition “People Come, People Go” for soprano, violin, and piano at the event. The composition, based on the theme of “animal welfare and the general care and valuation of animals,” won Artists for Animals’ 2017 call for scores.

Doors open at 6 p.m., and the event begins with a silent auction featuring rescue animal artwork, gift baskets and drawings and paintings from the advanced life drawing students at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Wine, desserts and coffee will be served during the silent auction. Artwork, photography and videography from Berg and other local artists will be on display.

“My first passion, of course, is weather, but a very close second is photography,” Coyle says. “I absolutely love photos and I think photos can be extremely powerful. With music and photography combined, I think that’s a really powerful thing that can draw people in. People love music, they love looking at pictures and most people here in North Texas love animals, so I think all those things just fit well together.”

Coyle and her husband adopted Luna, whom Coyle describes as “kind of a mutt,” from the SPCA in Dallas. Lucy, a black cat (one of Coyle’s other passions is Halloween), was adopted in California. They’ve both been photographed for Artists for Animals, and Luna even made the charity’s 2017 calendar.

“Luna has started her modeling career,” Coyle jokes. “She was very excited about that. Last year, they photographed Lucy as well. It’s hard to photograph a black cat and a black dog, and they don’t like posing for pictures and won’t sit still, but Teresa was really awesome and photographed them.”

Coyle says that she still has her violin, but she let her practicing slip away when she got busier with her meteorology career and several post-college moves.

“I wasn’t a part of an orchestra anymore, so I guess I just stopped playing,” she says. “But growing up, it was a huge part of my life. I started in sixth or seventh grade, whenever they let you go around and test out all the musical instruments to see if you want to play one. I told my parents I wanted to play violin, and they didn’t really believe me. So they rented a violin, because they were like, ‘She’s going to drop this, we’re not buying a violin.’ I kept it for a long time till I finally got my own violin.”

Coyle says her dad is a big guitar player, so she’s honing her own guitar skills.

“My dad was self-taught, left-handed guitar,” she says. “He says that back in the day, people didn’t really do lessons [for left-hand guitar], they all wanted people to play right-handed. So he taught himself. Growing up, I would always hear music playing. He still does it now. On the weekends, my dad would pull out all of his records and say, ‘Music’s important,’ so there was a lot of Rolling Stones and Beatles and he’d say, ‘You need to know these songs. This is what we grew up to.’ ”

Tickets for Concert for Kindness are $100; all proceeds benefit Operation Kindness, a no-kill animal shelter, to help shelter animals find homes. Tickets are available at https://artistsforanimalstx.com/buy-tickets. The event begins at 6 p.m. March 12.

Eight Bells Alehouse in Dallas will host an Artists for Animals happy hour from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. March 1 — that’s today — featuring information about Concert for Kindness as well as a “Rescued With Love” exhibit featuring artwork of rescue pets. Eight Bells is at 831 Exposition Ave. in Dallas.

For information on both events, follow Artists for Animals on Facebook.

This story was originally published March 1, 2017 at 2:09 PM with the headline "Forecast for Colleen Coyle: raising awareness of animal-rescue charities."