Creatively Speaking

What does it take to make a chorus come together?  The pressure of an impending performance?  The skill and sensibility of a conductor? The intrinsic beauty of the music? WRTI’s Meridee Duddleston stopped by the Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill for a rehearsal of the Greater South Jersey Chorus as it strives for perfection.

This Saturday evening, May 18th at 8 pm, The Greater South Jersey Chorus performs Spotlight, a program of choruses and songs from opera, stage, and screen. The concert will be performed at The Roman Catholic Church of St. Isaac Jogues in Marlton.  More information about the concert.

Let us know Where Music Lives in your community! Add your ideas in the comments section here and check out our other Where Music Lives posts.

The 2013 Philadelphia Jewish Music Festival concluded with a curious 1918 silent film, The Yellow Ticket, presented at the Gershman Y in Center City, with live musical accompaniment that gave the often-grainy images a new life and renewed meaning. One of the first films about anti-Semitism, The Yellow Ticket reminded The Philadelphia Inquirer's David Patrick Stearns just how much the world has changed – and how much it has yet to change.

The renowned British conductor and early-music expert Nicholas McGegan is the conductor on Sunday’s Philadelphia Orchestra In Concert broadcast on WRTI.

McGegan, an accomplished harpsichordist and flutist, specializes in Baroque, and early Romantic repertoire. But as WRTI’s Jim Cotter reports, this doesn’t stop him from being a strong advocate for new music.

Today, J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are among the most popular pieces from the Baroque era. WRTI’s Susan Lewis explores the mystery in the story of the famous concertos.   

On Sunday, May 19th, WRTI will broadcast The Philadelphia Orchestra performing Bach’s first four Brandenburg Concertos and his Orchestral Suite No. 3.