News

Great news! We’ve been awarded a $50,000 challenge grant from the Knight Foundation to fund our new WRTI Music Makers series. WRTI is one of only 43 recipients to be chosen out of several thousand applicants.

We’re having fun with numbers on Now Is the Time, Sunday, May 12th at 10 pm. Four dances for piano is what Keith Carpenter calls An even number of odd pieces, and Sketches Set Seven, also for piano, is Ed Bland’s contribution to what he calleds “urban classical funk.”

Mr. Bland passed away after this show was produced, so we honor his memory with this look into his wide-ranging career.

Charles Wuorinen’s Dodecadactyl is a fun two-guitar romp through the twelve pitches, and from her set of life-rhythm-inspired Genesis works is Janika Vandervelde’s Genesis V, for four guitars. For two sopranos is the riveting Madrigal III by Sergio Cervetti, setting a text from pre-Columbian Mexico.

Woody Herman's centennial birthday is Thursday May 16th. And this Sunday evening at 7 pm, Big Band Jazz will spend an hour with some of "Woody's Goodies."

If the classical recording market is supposedly global, why is a major Yannick Nezet-Seguin recording available seemingly everywhere but here? The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns sent away to Japan for the conductor’s new Rotterdam Philharmonic recording - and wonders why.

This week we mark the birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who was born in Russia on May 7, 1840 and died suddenly at age 53. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, the composer -  internationally renowned for his great melodies - was also a master of  technique and form. His body of work includes major works for the ballet, opera, and orchestra, as well as chamber music, concertos, sacred music, piano music, and solo songs.   

Music lives on - and at - WRTI, where throughout 2013 we're celebrating our 60th anniversary. "The Diamond Sessions” - a series of classical and jazz performances recorded live before audiences at the WRTI studios, are just a part of these celebrations. The first session featured jazz vocalist Joanna Pascale who told WRTI’s Meridee Duddleston that, for her, it all starts with the lyrics.

Cellist David Finckel has been a member of the Emerson String Quartet for over 30 years. In that time, the ensemble has garnered a reputation as one of the world’s finest chamber ensembles. Now Finckel is leaving the group. But as WRTI’s Jim Cotter reports, it - and he - will endure.

Join us Sunday at 1 pm (one hour earlier than usual) as Garrick Ohlsson plays Brahms, and Yannick returns to the podium to conduct a performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 and two lush orchestral works by Richard Strauss - Death and Transfiguration, and a suite from his opera, Der Rosenkavalier!